Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
long story short
- Android 15 may add an adaptive timeout option that automatically turns off your device’s screen when you’re not using it.
- When you’re not using your Android device, it’s important to lock it so others can’t access your apps and data.
- Android’s screen timeout feature turns off the device’s screen and then locks it after a set amount of time.
Google will release the next major version of the Android operating system, Android 15, sometime this fall, and we’ve already discovered its many new security and privacy features. These include new private spaces for your sensitive apps, additional protection against rogue “stingray” devices, better control over when your location is shared with cellular networks, automatic editing of one-time passwords (OTPs) in notifications ) etc. Given that there are still four preview builds left before Android 15’s stable release, there are bound to be more security features that have yet to be added or discovered. One such feature we expect to see in an upcoming beta release is called Adaptive Timeout.
If your device has a screen lock enabled (and you really should), Android will automatically lock your device after a set amount of time. By default, Android turns off the screen after 30 seconds of inactivity and then locks the device after another 5 seconds. These thresholds can be changed in the following ways: Settings > Display > Screen Timeout and Settings > Security & Privacy > Device unlock > Screen lock settings, respectively.
Mishaal Rahman / Android Authority
If you’re doing something that requires keeping your device’s screen awake and unlocked, but unable to interact with it, you can turn on the optional Screen Attention feature on some devices. Google introduced this feature with the Pixel 4 series that “prevents the screen from turning off while you’re looking at it.” It uses the device’s front-facing camera to see if someone is looking at the screen, so even though the screen is normally set to time out after 30 seconds, It stays awake as long as a face is detected in front of it.
While Android provides users with the option to automatically extend the screen time on their device through the Screen Focus feature, the operating system does not offer the opposite functionality. In other words, Android does not have a function that can automatically shorten the screen time. However, this will change in Android 15 with the new adaptive timeout feature.
one APK teardown Help predict future features that may appear on the service based on ongoing code. However, such predicted functionality may not be publicly released.
In the Android 15 Developer Preview 2 build, I discovered a string for a new “adaptive timeout” setting that “automatically turns off the screen early if you’re not using the device.” The feature’s description doesn’t say how the operating system actually knows when you’re not using your device, but it may use the device’s front-facing camera or other presence sensors to find out.
<string name="contextual_timeout_description">Automatically turns off your screen early if you’re not using your device</string>
<string name="contextual_timeout_title">Adaptive timeout</string>
These strings can be found in Android 15 DP2’s Settings app, but the code that references them belongs to com.google.* Namespaces. This suggests that the adaptive timeout feature will not be part of the Android Open Source Release (AOSP), but rather part of Google’s Android 15 release for Pixel devices. This would make it similar to the Screen Attention feature, which is also not enabled out of the box in AOSP because it is powered by Google’s Android System Intelligence app.
With the adaptive timeout feature in Android 15, you can enjoy the benefits of extended screen timeouts without significantly compromising security, because the operating system will be able to intelligently turn off the screen (and then lock it) when you’re done using the device. This also affects battery life, as longer screen timeouts mean the screen is on longer, consuming more battery.