This excellent Samsung Good Lock feature should come to all Android phones
Say what you will about Samsung One UI, but it makes a strong argument for being one of the most feature-rich Android skins on the market. That's in large part due to the company's Good Lock suite of apps, which allows you to deeply customize various aspects of your phone.
The latest Good Lock app is Display Assistant, which was released at the tail end of 2024. After recently downloading it, I've discovered a feature I'd love to see on all of my future Android phones.
Screen timeout by app
All smartphones let you adjust the screen timeout period, which is how long it takes for your phone screen to turn off due to inactivity. However, Display Assistant takes this a step further and lets you adjust the screen timeout for each individual app. That's incredibly useful on paper, as some apps would benefit from a longer or shorter screen timeout period.
I find this extremely useful for reading ebooks, where your phone might mistake the lack of touch input for inactivity. In fact, I would've loved this for my LG V60 and its Dual Screen Case. That's because I use the Wide Mode app to span ebooks across both screens, but the phone reverts to a single-screen view after the screen goes to sleep.
This feature would've also been useful when I was recently testing the GameHub emulator on my Pixel phone. I was downloading a demo and other components via this app, but these downloads would often stop and sometimes restart if I let the screen turn off. That meant I was forced to prod the screen every now and then to make sure the content actually downloaded. So, making GameHub's screen timeout five or 10 minutes would've certainly helped in this regard.
I also imagine this would be practical for video-related apps, where encoding, saving, or uploading a clip might take a while. The last thing you want is for the process to be interrupted because the phone decided to shut off the screen.
What else can you do with Display Assistant?
This isn't the only useful feature I've found in Display Assistant. The app also offers a Quick Settings toggle to keep the screen on for 30 minutes. That's useful if you haven't set individual screen timeouts for your apps but need the phone to stay awake in a given situation.
The nifty screen controls don't end here, either. I can even force specific apps to run at a standard refresh rate. Modern Android phones are very adept at dynamically adjusting the screen refresh rate to balance fluidity and battery life, but this is still a useful option. It's particularly handy if you value the high refresh rate in some apps (e.g. games, web browsers) but are happy with a 60Hz cap in others. Thankfully, apps capped at 60Hz can still dip below this threshold, which means you'vestill got the battery life benefits of a variable refresh rate screen.
What setting would you like to see on all Android phones?
0 votes
Per-app screen timeout
NaN %
Per-app refresh rate adjustments
NaN %
A slider to speed up auto-brightness adjustment
NaN %
Otherwise, Display Assistant also has a couple of features related to adaptive brightness. For one, you can adjust the speed at which your phone changes screen brightness (up to 4x). That's useful if auto-brightness is just too slow to adapt to your surroundings. However, you can also reset your adaptive brightness patterns altogether. The ability to have your phone relearn your brightness preferences isn't new, but this solution is more convenient than the current method. Right now, you have to reset your adaptive brightness data by diving into settings > apps > Device Health Services > Storage > Clear Data.
In any event, this is another great Good Lock app worth downloading if you're a Samsung owner. But I really hope manufacturers like Google, OnePlus, and others offer similar per-app display controls on their own phones in the near future.
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