AOD Tweaks as a notification LED replacement

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A creative AOD hack that only turns on with notifications

Most smartphones today do not ship with a separate notification LED. My Google Pixel 6a only provides a minimal set of options to customize the AOD. While userspace apps that allow AOD customizations exist, I found their impact on the phone’s battery to be much higher than the vendor-optimized AOD built into the OS. I explored some open-source options in the hopes of adding more features and optimizing battery through Shizuku (to enable power-saving modes), however the basic idea of these custom AOD apps drawing constantly to the screen wasn’t very appealing. I found a great deep-dive into customizable “At A Glance” screen for Pixel phones, but it wasn’t what I was looking for. Plus, as the author mentions, this hacky approach used APIs that could break in future OS releases.

As I was brainstorming some Notification Listener related solutions, I found Aodify which put a different spin on the same problem - why not toggle the whole AOD setting altogether? I immediately forked the project on Github and added a few optional switches to get the features I wanted, like ignoring DND modes and resetting notification state when screen was turned on and off. You can find my fork here. Other battery-saving features could be to turn off the AOD when inside the pocket, or only switch it on at regular intervals after receiving a notification.