Pixel phones will get a smarter always-on display that saves battery life

At the cost of some battery life, your phone’s always-on display (AOD) feature lets you see the time and new notifications at a glance. While most Android phones have an AOD, it doesn’t behave the same way on every device. Some phones let you schedule the AOD to benefit from its glanceable information without unnecessarily draining the battery. Pixel phones, however, offer no such controls — the AOD is either on or off during the day. Fortunately, Google is working on a new setting that will soon give Pixel users more control over this feature.

Earlier today, Google released a new Android Canary build. While its most visible change is a redesigned flashlight brightness slider, a look under the hood reveals that Google is also working on AOD enhancements. Code within the Settings app points to a new option to “turn off display on inactivity,” which “powers down the display when no user activity is detected to save power.” The string names confirm this new setting is for the AOD:

Although “doze” typically refers to Android’s low-power device standby state, it’s also used as a code-name for the ambient display feature in AOSP. Thus, we suspect this setting will appear under Settings > Display > Always-on display, though it isn’t live yet in the 2510 Android Canary release.

The current AOD options on the Pixel 10 series.

Unfortunately, the code also doesn’t specify how Android will determine user activity or how long the phone must be inactive before the feature kicks in. We can look to Samsung’s implementation for a potential blueprint, though. Samsung phones offer an “auto” AOD option that disables the display when the phone is face down, in a dark place, or when it detects the user is asleep. Pixel phones already use their proximity sensors to disable AOD when your phone is face down or in a pocket, but they don’t otherwise track your activity. Thus, if you leave your Pixel phone alone on a table for several hours, its AOD will continue running until Bedtime Mode kicks in.

Regardless, it’s great to see Google finally adding more control over the AOD on Pixel phones. When the company introduced AOD wallpaper support on the new Pixel 10 series, we hoped it was just the beginning of a more customizable experience, and it appears we were right. Hopefully, these new power-saving options won’t be limited to new Pixel devices and will also be made available on existing ones.

This article was updated at 9:33 PM ET to clarify the use of the “Doze” code-name in AOSP and add additional details on how the Pixel’s AOD currently works.