Android 15 may allow your phone’s screen to turn off when you’re not looking at it

The screen timeout feature on Android phones, while handy for saving battery and ensuring your data remains protected too, is a little annoying all the same, at times. Why? Picture this. You’ve set your phone down and propped it against a few books or a pen stand and are watching a film. Suddenly though, the screen automatically turns off, due to a lack of any touch input.

With Android 15, Google may improve this with a rather handy feature, called adaptive screen timeout to help deal with the same.

What is the new adaptive screen timeout feature?

Currently, one can set the duration of time for which their phone stays on before shutting the display and locking the screen, if it detects inactivity. Additionally, there’s also a Screen attention feature (first introduced with the Google Pixel 4), that keeps your display on longer if you’re looking at it. Starting with Android 15 though, Google could add a feature that does the opposite.

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The new timeout feature was first spotted by Android Authority in the Android 15 Developer Preview. Strings of code suggest that the feature will automatically turn off your phone when it’s not being used when enabled. However, this setting doesn’t depend on a lack of touch inputs. Instead, it will depend on the same method of sensing as the screen attention setting does (that is, the phone’s front camera.)

Now, it is important to note that the code suggests that the feature could be launched as a Pixel exclusive. Like the Screen attention feature though, which has since expanded to other smartphones, Google might roll out the adaptive screen timeout feature to other Android devices eventually too.

Similar features on iPhones

While there isn’t exactly a direct comparison available today to the feature, it is very similar to an iOS feature. Under Settings on iPhones, there is a toggle for Attention Aware Features, which causes phones to react differently when you are looking at them. These features use the TrueDepth sensor on iPhones, which is also used for Face ID.

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Though not much else is known about the adaptive screen timeout feature for now, hopefully we get to know more as and when Google releases more previews of Android 15. The stable version of the operating system is expected to be rolled out to the broader general user base sometime in the fall of this year.