Plus, a smattering of foldable improvements
While Google offers a perfectly serviceable Android browser in the form of Chrome, but Samsung’s browser has a surprising number of fans. There’s a new beta release of this app today (v18), and Samsung has called out a few notable improvements. Chief among them is the new text extraction tool, foldable tweaks, and a more advanced form of tracker blocking.
Samsung Internet v18 includes a new “text capture” feature, which you’ll find in the context menu. Essentially, this option lets you grab text directly from images and drop it into your clipboard. However, you need the latest One UI 4.1.1 for this feature, so it’s only going to work on newer Samsung phones like the S22 family. Even the Z Fold3 is still on the slightly older 4.1 release. The Fold does at least get the benefit of more refined tool/URL bar options (see below).
One of the main reasons people use non-Chrome browsers on Android is to level up their privacy—Google is an advertising company after all. Samsung’s browser has long had a feature called Smart Anti-Tracking, and it’s getting even smarter in v18. According to Samsung, the app now detects and blocks trackers that use CNAME cloaking in an attempt to circumvent normal protection technologies. In the same vein, v18 will default to HTTPS by default.
The latest build of Samsung Internet bumps the underlying Chromium framework to v99, which is a few versions behind the current stable release. You can install the beta on any Android phone, and it’s bundled with Samsung devices where it serves as the default way of accessing the web. It’s available in the Samsung app store, as well as in the Play Store. However, the Play Store is still spitting out v17 for me. If you’re in the same boat, there’s a v18 build available on APK Mirror.
