- Viral Videos of Fake iPhone Privacy Screen Feature Circulate
- It appears to be a prototype made by a creator on Figma
- Apple doesn’t have the existing hardware to deploy a feature like this
Have you seen viral videos of Apple’s alleged version of Samsung’s Privacy Display tool? I hate to break it to you, but they’re all wrong – and even I foolishly succumbed to them.
Essentially, a number of creators on TikTok have demonstrated a privacy screen feature in what looks exactly like Apple’s iPhone settings. These accounts claim the feature is part of a beta testing rollout for developers, garnering thousands of comments, but twice as much confusion given that Apple just rolled out iOS 26.4.
It turns out that, despite their real appearance, these viral videos are fake and Apple has not revealed any plans to roll out its own privacy screen feature. I’m on Apple’s iOS 26 public beta and have checked my settings several times – no such tool exists.
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So why do these videos seem terribly convincing? After going through a handful of videos and the comments below, there are a few things you should be aware of.
Apple doesn’t have the hardware
Just a few months ago, Samsung unveiled the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the flagship model for its impressive Privacy Display feature that lets you hide notifications and other on-screen content from those who aren’t looking directly at the phone. Naturally, it would only be a matter of time before Apple takes this route – but now is not the time, because Apple simply doesn’t have any existing hardware capable of supporting a privacy feature like this.
As for the Galaxy S26 Ultra, the screen is constructed differently from previous models, using “narrow” pixels that emit light towards the front and “wide” pixels that emit light to the sides. When Privacy View is enabled, wide pixels operate at a minimum level, limiting visibility for side-viewers, with narrow pixels providing full clarity for the facing user.
For Apple to deploy its own privacy screen tool on existing hardware, it would need similar pixel technology to support it, so what you saw in the viral videos is definitely wrong. But even then, how was its creator able to reproduce the Samsung tool on iPhones incapable of offering support? One word; prototype.
Users get creative and viewers get naive
Digging through endless comments is paying off, and it appears that the Apple privacy tool you see online is a prototype made by user and so-called “iOS exploiter” @nxtcoreee3 on TikTok, whose video has racked up more than 12 million views at the time of writing. The user claims to have developed the prototype using Figma, a design tool used to create user interfaces and user experiences.
In addition to the developer’s video, other users with access to the prototype have shared their own videos, making this appear to be a legitimate beta deployment. But each video has one thing in common; the devices in the videos all have the timestamp 3:19. This is no coincidence, as user @nxtcoreee3 explicitly writes in his TikTok bio “3:19 is my watermark”, proving that the iOS tool is completely invented.
With this combined with Apple’s lack of supporting hardware, it’s safe to say that Apple won’t be rolling out this privacy tool anytime soon and that the videos circulating online are just creative examples of what Apple could produce. But despite this, I wouldn’t say that Cards are completely irrelevant for Apple when it comes to developing its own version in the future.
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