For years, Android has given you multiple display options to turn your phone’s screen into a smart home hub, a digital photo frame, or even a customizable clock while it’s charging. If you’re like me and you use the same charger every night, you can have your phone show you something useful on your screen while charging instead of just displaying the battery percentage.
A couple of these options I absolutely wouldn’t use for fear of damaging my display, but some of them are genuinely useful, and I enjoy this feature every day when charging once I set it up right.
Your phone can show something useful when charging
Bedside clock, photo slideshow, home controls and more
Your phone doesn’t need to just show you the battery percentage while it’s charging. It can do so much more with a feature called Screen saver that offers a lot of options on Pixel, but is also present on Samsung Galaxy and other Androids.
This is especially useful if you use a wireless charger that orients your phone vertically — it props your phone up and creates the perfect canvas to turn your phone into a digital photo frame, a smart home control dashboard, a weather display, or just a bedside clock.
Here’s how to set it up
Pixel has the most options, Samsung Galaxy has some too
From the phones I’ve tested this on, Pixels have the most options.
On Pixels, you not only have the choice between the four Screen saver modes, but you also get several options to tweak the behavior of your Screen saver. Just head to Settings > Display & touch > Screen saver. If you go into “When to show”, you can specify that the Screen saver should only be displayed when the phone is “upright and charging” — meaning, on your wireless charger when it actually makes sense to display a photo slideshow of your personal pictures.
I like this option (which will use your phone’s accelerometer to detect when the phone is upright), because I don’t want my photo collection to show if I’m charging my phone on a table at a friend’s house. To take this a step further, you can check off “Restrict to wireless charging” to further limit this feature, so that if you are charging in your car with a wire, the Screen saver stays off so as not to distract you while driving.
The most configurable option is the clock on Pixel, which gives you six digital and three analog clock choices, plus you can specify if you want a light or dark theme, and if you want a small weather display next to your clock.
Another useful choice is the Weather display, which gives you a beautiful panel that presents the current conditions and an hourly forecast above a time display. I don’t love this one because it’s a bit too bright for my liking (and there are no configuration options to dim it out), plus I don’t see why someone would need a persistent display of the weather at all times on their phone while charging versus just using a dedicated weather app.
Another option at your disposal if you have a Pixel, which is helpful if you charge your phone close to where you sleep, is “Low light mode”, which will use the light sensor on your phone to switch to a dimly-lit clock if you’re in a very dark environment. This turns your phone into a very basic desk clock with a black background and white clock. I don’t use this since my phone charges in another room (where I like having a photo slideshow on display) but I would turn on Low light mode if I charged bedside. In additon you have Photos mode that lets you pick from albums within Google Photos to display.
You can even add home controls
This is super helpful if you have your home controls set up in the Google Home app. If you pick Home Controls, your phone will show you a dimly-lit dashboard of home controls based on how you have your Google Home app set up. If you charge your phone at the bedside, this is an incredibly useful option, so that you can adjust your shades, lights, and other connected home devices right from your bed.
How to enable Screen saver on Samsung Galaxy
If you have a Samsung Galaxy, you can enable Screen saver, but your options are a bit more limited than Pixel and most of the options around photos.
To access Screen saver on Galaxy, go to Settings > Display > Screen saver. There you will see four options: Colors (which displays a psychedelic pattern of colors on your screen), Photo Table (a photo slideshow where photos “fly in” with an animation), Photo frame (a photo slideshow that shows one photo at a time from specified folders), and Photos (my favorite, which lets you select albums from your Google Photos account). All the photo options let you pick which folders you want to take photos from, and all the Photo modes except for the one with the Google Photos (which has the best homescreen widgets for adorning your screen with meaningful memories) icon are pulling from local folders on your Galaxy.
What about burn-in?
Each screen saver is animated to avoid it
Should you give your screen a rest to avoid burn-in? Clearly Google has thought about this, as all Screen savers are designed to be dim and animated to prevent the image from burning in.
But just to err on the side of caution, when using this feature I use one of the photo slideshow options which is animated and varied. For fear of burn-in, I wouldn’t pick the dim clock option (which has the least motion) or weather.