Samsung Internet

Samsung Internet Browser (or simply Samsung Internet or S Browser ) is a desktop and mobile web browser developed by Samsung Electronics, based on the open-source Chromium project. It comes pre-installed on Samsung Galaxy devices and, since 2015, has been available for download from Google Play for all Android devices.

Samsung estimated that it had around 400 million monthly active users in 2016. According to StatCounter, it had a market share of around 5.06% (among 69.37% for all Chrome variants) in January 2023.

In November 2023, Samsung Internet was released on Microsoft Windows via the Microsoft Store. Its Windows release is currently unavailable, having been inexplicably removed from the Microsoft Store in January 2024.

Engine
Around early 2013, it was decided to base the browser on Chromium, and the first Chromium-based version was shipped with the Samsung Galaxy S4 model later that year.

Most of the code differences to the standard Chromium code base were introduced in order to support Samsung-specific hardware, such as Gear VR and biometric sensors.

Features

 * Content blocking extensions
 * Gear VR and DeX integration
 * KNOX Support
 * Tabbed browsing with up to 99 tabs, where opening the 100th tab closes the earliest tab.
 * Bookmark Synchronization
 * Ad Blocking
 * Reading Mode
 * Saved Pages
 * "Secret mode" and biometric authentication (unavailable in Knox-tripped devices, which is disabled by eFuse hardware upon unlocking the bootloader )
 * Secure Web Auto Login
 * S Pen features
 * Find on pages
 * Support for service workers and Push API
 * Dark Mode
 * Customize Menu
 * Video Assistant
 * QR code scanner
 * Smart anti tracking

The Saved Pages feature has been criticized for lack of data portability, due to the pages being stored in a locked directory from which they can not be exported and backed up by the user.

Support
The later version (v6.2) of Samsung Internet for Android supports all Android 5.0 and above phones.

Previously, (v5.0) Samsung Internet for Android was only supported on Samsung Galaxy and Google Nexus phones with Android 5.0 and above.

Version history
Samsung Internet replaced the stock Android browser as the default on Samsung Galaxy devices in 2012.