Kellen
It’s OK if you have secretly been jealous of the Active Display feature that we constantly talk about from the Moto X – it’s that great of a feature, especially for those of us who run through thousands of notifications per day. Be jealous no more, though, an app that runs on all Kit Kat devices and introduces part of Active Display’s functionality is now available on Google Play for free.
The app is called AcDisplay, and it really will bring a piece of Active Display to your non-Moto X. Using this app, you will see notifications light up your screen as they arrive and show as a circular icon with a timer ring, which is your chance to act on that notification before your screen times back out. If you’d like to act on the most recent notification, you can swipe up and into it. If you’d like to simply unlock your phone, you can do that by swiping down. As new notifications arrive, they will stack on the screen, though you can only act on the most recent.
For now, AcDisplay is pretty bare bones. It requires that you give it notification access and let it act as a Device Admin so that it can manage the screen off timeout policy. Once you have done those two things, it just sort of runs on its own. I’d imagine there will be settings for selecting which types of notifications can show, how long the timer will run for, etc. in the future.
I should point out that this is certainly not the full Active Display that Moto X users can experience. AcDisplay won’t appear every time you pick your phone up or pull it out of your pocket. It only shows as new notifications arrive. Still, not a bad early attempt. We’ll be watching this one closely.
Play Link
Collapse Show Comments53 Comments