How to Customize the Always-On Display on Android

The always-on display, or AOD, keeps a small slice of the screen lit while the phone is locked and idle. Most setups show the time, date, battery level, and any waiting notification icons. It is not a full screen, just a dim sketch, which is the whole point. You catch the time across a desk without touching the phone or lighting the room.

Two things separate AOD from a normal lock screen. It runs while the phone is asleep, not just when you tap it, and it stays deliberately dim to save power. Because of that, the clock you see on AOD often borrows from your lock screen clock, so customizing one frequently changes the other. That overlap matters once you start digging through the menus, since the setting you want may sit under the lock screen rather than under a menu called AOD.

On a Pixel running Android 16, the toggle lives in Settings, then Display, then Lock screen. Look for the option named Always show time and info and turn it on. That same Lock screen menu is where you control the rest: there is a Clock entry for the style, the color, and a width slider, plus a Dynamic clock toggle that lets the clock size shift based on what is on the screen.

One thing trips people up. The clock you pick here is the same one your AOD uses, so the fastest way to restyle the always-on clock is to restyle the lock screen clock. You can also reach these controls by long-pressing the home screen, tapping Wallpaper and style, and swiping over to the Lock screen tab, which gives you a live preview as you change the font and color. Pixel keeps the AOD itself fairly minimal compared with Samsung, so do not expect stickers or full background images here. It is a clean clock, the date, and your notifications, and that is roughly the extent of it.

Samsung gives you more knobs. On a Galaxy phone, open Settings and go to Lock screen and AOD, then tap Always On Display. The toggle at the top turns it on, and below it sits the When to show menu, which is the setting most people actually want.

That When to show menu has four options. Auto shows the AOD most of the time but hides it in a pocket or a dark room. Always keeps it on continuously while the phone is locked. Tap to show only lights it up after you tap the screen, which is the gentlest on battery. As scheduled lets you set hours, so you can keep it off overnight. From One UI 6.1 onward, the AOD clock matches your lock screen clock, so to change the clock face, font, or color you head to the Lock screen menu and edit the clock there. On One UI 7 you get a dedicated clock picker with font styles and colors built into that flow. Older Galaxy phones on One UI 6.0 and earlier still have a separate Clock style entry inside the AOD menu itself, so if your layout looks different, check your One UI version first.

Beyond the clock, both phones let you put a bit more on the AOD. Samsung shows music controls on the always-on display while audio is playing, so you can pause or skip without waking the phone, and recent One UI versions let you add a small row of widgets like the weather or your next alarm. Pixel keeps this lighter, surfacing media controls and notification icons but not a widget tray on the AOD layer itself.

The tap behavior is worth setting deliberately. On Samsung, the Tap to show option means the screen stays dark until you tap, which I find is the best balance for a phone that sits on a desk all day. On a Pixel, a single tap or a lift wakes the lock screen rather than the AOD, so the lift to wake and tap to check screen gestures under Settings, then Display, control how easily it lights up. If your AOD feels like it is always on when you do not want it, that is usually a gesture setting rather than the AOD setting itself.

Plenty of phones do not ship a true always-on display, and a few cannot do it well no matter what. If yours is one of them, the Play Store has apps that fake the effect by painting a dim clock screen when the phone is idle. Always On AMOLED is the long-running one, with custom fonts, clock styles, a pocket mode, notification edge glow, and AMOLED wallpapers. AOD Flow leans into minimal edge-to-edge clock styles and bakes in burn-in protection by drifting the clock around the screen.

Be clear-eyed about the trade. These apps do not access a real low-power display layer, so they keep the screen genuinely on at low brightness, which uses more battery than a built-in AOD. They also need permissions to draw over other apps and to read notifications, so check what each one asks for before you commit. On an OLED or AMOLED phone they look close to the real thing. On an LCD phone the result is dimmer and hungrier, which leads straight into the limit worth understanding. If you are reworking your lock screen anyway, these pair naturally with the ideas in our guide to the best clock widgets for personalization.

AOD is not free, and not every phone can run it properly. The reason is the screen technology. OLED and AMOLED panels light each pixel on its own, so a mostly black AOD only powers the few pixels showing the clock, which keeps the cost low. In normal use you might see an extra few percent of drain over a day with a built-in AOD on an OLED phone, sometimes less if you use a schedule or tap to show.

LCD panels work differently. They use a single backlight behind the whole screen, so showing even a small clock means lighting the entire panel, which burns power fast. That is why true always-on display is rare on LCD phones, and why a third-party AOD app on an LCD device drains noticeably more than the built-in feature does on OLED. If you are not sure which panel your phone has, look up the spec sheet for the words OLED or AMOLED. No mention of either usually means LCD, and means you should lean on Tap to show or skip a full-time AOD altogether. If battery life is your priority across the board, it is worth pairing this with the habits in our roundup of the best battery saver apps for Android.

Here is what I land on after fiddling with both phones. Turn AOD on, but put it on a schedule or set it to tap to show so it is not lit all night for no one. Pick a clock that is readable rather than fancy, since you will glance at it from across a room and a thin decorative face disappears in daylight. Let the clock follow your wallpaper color if your phone offers that, so the lock screen and AOD read as one piece.

Leave the rest mostly bare. Music controls earn their place because you use them, but a row of widgets you never look at is just glow you are paying for in battery. If your phone has no AOD and you reach for an app, test it for a day and watch your battery graph before deciding it is worth keeping. This is one corner of a larger setup, and it sits comfortably next to the rest of the ideas in our Android personalization hub and the lock screen looks you can build with the best launcher apps for Android.