If you want to prevent your Android screen from going black during a call, you need to make a few changes to your settings. This guide explains how.
Tired of your screen going dark during important phone calls on your Android device?
This is not a bug – this is a feature. Your phone is designed to stay blank during a call to prevent you from accidentally touching the screen. It’s also a power saving feature that protects your screen and battery life during long calls.
Unfortunately, the feature isn’t for everyone. If you want to know how to keep the screen on during a call on Android, follow the steps below.
Recent Articles
Why does my screen go black during a call?
Most of the time there is a simple reason why your screen goes black during a call on your phone – proximity.
Your phone is usually held to your ear when you call someone. The skin on your ear, like your fingertip, can register as a touch on your screen. When your ear touches your screen, it can perform actions. This is not desirable behavior. To stop this, smartphones usually go black and turn off during the call.
A proximity sensor in your phone helps register when your ear is near your phone screen during a live call. If it does, it turns itself off to protect you.
If you don’t like this behavior (or it doesn’t work properly), you can prevent the screen from going blank. You can do this by changing your device’s display or motion settings. You can also use third party apps to solve the problem by turning off your proximity sensor.
How to disable proximity sensor on your Android phone
For some reason there isn’t much consistency in how Android manufacturers approach this functionality. Some devices may have a setting to keep the screen on during a call on Android.
It’s entirely possible that your Android device doesn’t have this feature as a setting that you can turn on or off. Alternatively, it will be hidden where you cannot find it. Unfortunately, some phone manufacturers and later versions of Android also made it difficult to turn this feature on or off.
Your best chance of success is to use a third-party app to help you disable the proximity sensor. There are several apps for this purpose, but an easy-to-use one is this KinScreen apartment While it’s not guaranteed to work, it should be helpful for most users.
How to disable proximity sensor on Android
How to disable the proximity sensor on your Android phone:
- Install that KinScreen App from the Google Play Store.
- Follow the on-screen instructions to grant it the required permissions.
- After granting permissions, tap While using 0 apps check box.
- grant permission for usage access to detect running apps when prompted.
- Return to the menu and tap While using 0 apps anew. Find and check all of them this time phone and Phone call options.
- Next, tap OK to save.
- Tap the During a call checkbox to enable it.
- Tap the While dubbed checkbox to enable it.
- Disable those Unless the slope is less than 10.0 check box by tapping it.
- At this point, KinScreen should be ready to keep your screen alive during calls. You can also manually ensure your screen is always active by scrolling down from the top to reveal your notification panel and tapping Manual switching Possibility.
If you find that the KinScreen app is not working, you need to try an alternative app from the Google Play Store.
How to keep the screen on during a call on a Samsung Android phone
If you have a recent Samsung smartphone, you may be able to keep the screen on by changing a setting in your device settings menu. This feature uses your front camera to detect when you’re looking at the screen. That way you can use it when you need it, but the screen will go black again if you put it back to your ear during a call.
On some Samsung devices this setting is called Smart stay. The feature is not named on others, but is available on your device mmovements and gestures settings menu.
How to keep the screen active during a call on a Samsung phone:
- Open the settings menu of your Samsung device.
- in the settings Menu, tap Advanced Features > Motions and Gestures.
- Tap the slider next to Keep the screen on during playback Option to enable the feature.
- If you don’t see this feature, tap Smart stay slider instead. This will enable the same feature.
With this feature enabled, you should be able to use your phone screen when you’re on a call – but only when you’re looking at the screen. If you want the screen to stay on all the time, you need to disable the proximity sensor entirely.
Stay productive on Android
With the steps above, you should be able to keep the screen on during a call on an Android phone. However, as we mentioned, a bit of trial and error is required as this feature cannot be simply turned off.
Do you want to change your call preferences? You can start blocking numbers on Android that you don’t want to receive calls from. You can also set up your voicemail on Android to monitor calls without completely locking yourself down.
Switch to another provider? You may first need to open the SIM card slot on your Android device to swap SIMs. Unless you use a newer eSIM instead.
