Certain apps need to keep the screen turned on, such as games or movie apps. Some Android APIs automatically keep the screen on for you. In other cases, you can set a flag to manually keep the screen on.
APIs that keep the screen on
Some Android APIs automatically keep the screen on for you. If you're using one of these APIs, you don't need to control the screen state manually.
This is a partial list of APIs that keep the screen on:
- The telecom library automatically keeps the screen on during calls.
Manually keep the screen on
To keep the device's screen on, set the FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON
flag in your
activity. This flag may only be set in an activity, never in a service or other
app component. For example:
Kotlin
class MainActivity : Activity() { override fun onCreate(savedInstanceState: Bundle?) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState) setContentView(R.layout.activity_main) window.addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON) } }
Java
public class MainActivity extends Activity { @Override protected void onCreate(Bundle savedInstanceState) { super.onCreate(savedInstanceState); setContentView(R.layout.activity_main); getWindow().addFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON); } }
Another way to keep the screen on is by setting the
the android:keepScreenOn
attribute
in your application's layout XML file:
<RelativeLayout xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android" android:layout_width="match_parent" android:layout_height="match_parent" android:keepScreenOn="true"> ... </RelativeLayout>
Using android:keepScreenOn="true"
is equivalent to using
FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON
.
You can use whichever approach is best for your app. The advantage of setting
the flag programmatically in your activity is that it gives you the option of
programmatically clearing the flag later and thereby allowing the screen to turn
off.
If an app with the FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON
flag goes into the background, the
system allows the screen to turn off normally. You don't need to explicitly
clear the flag in this case. If your app no longer needs to keep the screen on,
you should clear the flag. by calling
clearFlags(WindowManager.LayoutParams.FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON)
.
Ambient Mode for TV
On TV devices, use FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON
to prevent the device from going
into Ambient Mode during active video playback. If the foreground activity
does not set FLAG_KEEP_SCREEN_ON
, the device automatically enters Ambient Mode
after a period of inactivity.