Samsung Internet is one of the most popular web browsers for Android, but it has always forced you to keep your login information in Samsung’s own cloud storage. That seems to finally be changing with the release of Samsung Internet 12, which is now in beta.
Samsung Internet Beta 12 is now rolling out on the Play Store, and the main new feature is partial support for the Autofill API that was first introduced in Android 8.0 Oreo. The Autofill API was explicitly designed to work equally well no matter what service you’re storing your passwords in — Google’s Autofill works just as well on my phone as Firefox Lockwise — but Samsung Internet is enforcing a whitelist system for some reason. 1Password, LastPass, and Dashlane are supported, but not Google or Firefox Lockwise.
Left: Samsung Internet inverting site colors; Right: Chrome using the dark theme provided by the site
The other key change in this release is that the rendering engine has been updated to Chromium 79, an improvement from the year-old Chromium 71 core that was previously in use. However, Samsung Internet doesn’t seem to support the dark themes provided by sites, which was added in Chrome 76; instead, the browser still tries to invert colors on its own. Perhaps this will be fixed in the final release.
Let’s hope the final release of Samsung Internet 12 includes support for all Autofill services, and not just a select few options. The beta release is still rolling out on the Play Store, so if you don’t have it yet, feel free to grab it from APKMirror.
