Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek
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Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best—especially if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone. Before tapping on the Chrome icon, you may be surprised to find there is another browser on your phone that you like even more.
Samsung Internet comes pre-installed on Samsung phones and tablets. Don’t have a Galaxy device? That’s no problem. You can install Samsung Internet on non-Samsung devices as well. It has become my go-to web browser both for both work and play—I’m editing these words in it right now! Here’s what makes it great.
You can place controls at the bottom of the screen
Our phones are tall, yet virtually all mobile browsers place controls at the top of the scre…
Credit: Lucas Gouveia/How-To Geek
Sign in to your How-To Geek account
Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, but that doesn’t mean it’s the best—especially if you have a Samsung Galaxy phone. Before tapping on the Chrome icon, you may be surprised to find there is another browser on your phone that you like even more.
Samsung Internet comes pre-installed on Samsung phones and tablets. Don’t have a Galaxy device? That’s no problem. You can install Samsung Internet on non-Samsung devices as well. It has become my go-to web browser both for both work and play—I’m editing these words in it right now! Here’s what makes it great.
You can place controls at the bottom of the screen
Our phones are tall, yet virtually all mobile browsers place controls at the top of the screen. I have long fingers, and I still have a hard time stretching my thumb to the top of the screen when holding the phone with one hand. Samsung Internet is no exception here, but at least it offers the option to move everything to the bottom where it’s far more accessible.
With the URL bar at the bottom, I can more easily switch tabs and access settings. The only time I need to reach higher on the screen is to interact directly with the webpage.
Privacy features and content blocking come built-in
Samsung may not shy away from sneaking ads into some of its apps or even its home appliances, but it’s not an ad company, nor does the company have a suite of web services it wants to hook you in to. So, unlike Google, Samsung’s entire business model does not depend on tracking as much of your online activity as possible. As a result, Samsung has packed privacy features into its browser a step above and beyond what you see in Chrome.
Samsung Internet’s privacy features include some that you would expect from a more privacy-oriented browser like Firefox, such as the option to block all trackers. You can also automatically switch to HTTPS on websites that support it, and you can lock private browsing behind a password or fingerprint.
Samsung’s willingness to block content goes beyond stopping trackers and pesky pop-ups. Ad-blocking plug-ins are given a prominent spot in the app’s settings menu, meaning you don’t have to seek them out on your own or hunt around to find them.
The browser works with virtually every website** **
A web browser that can’t load the websites you need isn’t much good as a web browser. Fortunately, I rarely ever have issues stemming from Samsung Internet, even with my privacy settings cranked up. When I think there’s a problem and check the site in Chrome instead, I find the website usually doesn’t work in Chrome, either. This is because Samsung Internet, like most browsers these days, is based on the same engine Chrome is: Chromium.
But it’s not just a matter of whether the browser successfully renders a webpage. Since I currently do all of my work from my foldable phone, there’s a bigger reason I choose to use Samsung Internet.
Great for phones, foldables, tablets, and desktops** **
As someone who alternates between working directly on my Galaxy Z Fold 6’s internal display, connecting my phone wirelessly to a lapdock, and plugging in a pair of AR glasses, I’ve found that many Android browsers are designed exclusively to work on smaller phone screens. When you try to use them on a larger screen like that of a tablet or desktop, they often don’t adjust their interface. Worse—many zoom in so far that they’re unusable, because they assume you’re viewing the webpage on a smaller screen with an ultra-high resolution.
Samsung Internet works on whichever form factor you throw at it. My Galaxy Z Fold 6 is a 3-in-1 device you can only experience as an Android user. Sometimes I access Samsung Internet on the cover display, where it behaves more like a conventional mobile browser. More often, I use it on the inner screen, which is large enough to really make use of a desktop-style tab bar. The same is true when I open Samsung Internet on a tablet, like our Samsung Galaxy Tab S10 FE. When I connect my phone to wireless laptop and load up DeX, Samsung Internet truly looks like a desktop browser.
And if you happen to be hopping back and forth between your phone and a laptop, Samsung has an interest in porting its browser to Windows as well.
Samsung Internet can load the same webpages as Chrome, has a more configurable interface, contains some privacy features that corporations usually don’t allow, and can morph to fit whatever screen you need. It’s one of the best apps that Samsung makes, but it’s far from the only good one—it turns out that many of Samsung’s stock apps are pretty great.