Screen Awake
Android 8 and up

The screen stays on
for as long as you said.

A recipe on the worktop, a map, a sheet of music, a tutorial, something to show someone. One tap in the quick settings and the display stops going dark — for five, ten or thirty minutes, then it goes back to normal on its own.

Google PlayComing soon
1 tap
From the shade
1 px
The whole overlay
0
Ads · accounts · network
9:48▪▪▪ ▮
Quick settings
Awake
2:45
Wi-Fi
HOME
Bluetooth
OFF
Torch
OFF
Screen kept awake
2:45 left
STOP
Features

A switch where the switches are.

01
One tap, from the shade
Pull down the quick settings and tap Awake, next to Wi-Fi. The app itself does not need to be open, or ever opened again after the first setup.
02
Five, ten, thirty minutes
One tap starts five minutes. Tap again within five seconds and you walk through the times; a tap later than that simply turns it off. So a cold tap stays a predictable switch, and stopping never means cycling all the way round.
03
The time left, inside the icon
A ring that empties with the minutes still to go, drawn into the tile icon itself. Android 16 lets the shade shrink a tile down to its icon alone, with no room for a subtitle: this way the countdown survives that.
04
Three ways it ends
The power button always ends it. So does another tap on the tile. And so does the time running out — which is the point of picking one. After a reboot the screen is never left held on.
05
A notification, if you want one
Off unless you turn it on: it puts the countdown in the shade with a Stop button. The app never asks for the notification permission on its own — filling your shade uninvited, for something that works identically without it, is not a fair trade.
06
Set the brightnessPRO
While the screen is held awake it can sit at a brightness you choose: the minimum to read in the dark, the maximum for a QR code or a map in the sun. It goes back to normal when the session ends.
And also
English and Italian Android 8 and up No endPRO One tile per durationPRO Stops on low batteryPRO Works with notifications denied Follows your system theme
The permission, explained

Why it asks to draw over other apps.

Because it is the only way an app can stop the display from turning off — and this project found that out the hard way, by building the other thing first and throwing it away.

A wake lock, the API the documentation points you at, costs no permission at all. It also stops working the moment the app leaves the foreground: the system marks it disabled and the screen goes dark at the usual timeout, foreground service and all. The same feature on custom ROMs is not an app — it lives inside SystemUI, a system process whose locks are never disabled — and that privilege cannot be borrowed.

What does work is an invisible window, one pixel wide, that asks to keep the screen on. That is tied to a window being visible rather than to the app being in the foreground, so the system holds the display for us. It draws nothing over what you are doing and it catches no touches. It is one pixel, and it is the whole trick.

Wake lock, app in backgroundDISABLED · SCREEN OFF
Overlay window, app in background70 s ON · 15 s TIMEOUT
A five-minute session17:41:14 → 17:46:13
Oldest phone testedANDROID 11 · 4 MIN ON
With notifications deniedSCREEN STILL HELD
After a rebootNOTHING HELD

Measured on a Galaxy A15 (One UI 6), a Galaxy A20e (Android 11) and a Pixel (Android 17). Every number above, and how it was taken, is written down in the project's notes.

It has no internet permission
Not «it doesn't send anything»: it cannot. The permission is not in the manifest, so the app has no way to open a connection at all. Nothing to collect, nothing to sell, nothing to switch off later. The privacy page says it in full.
Free, with a Pro unlock
Five, ten and thirty minutes are free forever, with no ads and no account. A single €0.99 payment — not a subscription — unlocks running with no end, one tile per duration, the brightness of your choice and stopping on low battery. The purchase goes through Google Play.

Your hands are busy.
The screen shouldn't be.

Free for everyday durations, no ads, no account. An independent project.
Google PlayComing soon