Apple Screen Distance: the Android version for kids

A friend with an iPhone shows you something at the playground. Their daughter pulls the phone too close, and the screen quietly covers itself with a message until she moves it back. "It just came with the phone," they say. You go home, pick up your Android phone, and start hunting for the same setting. It isn't there.

If that is roughly how you arrived at this page, here is the short version. Apple's Screen Distance is a real, genuinely useful feature, most Android phones have no equivalent built in, and the gap is mostly filled by separate apps instead. Here is what Apple's feature does, why it exists, and what an Android parent can actually use in its place.

What is Apple's Screen Distance feature?

Screen Distance is part of Screen Time on the iPhone and iPad. It uses the same TrueDepth camera that powers Face ID to measure how far the screen is from your face. Hold the device closer than about 30 cm, that is 12 inches, for a stretch of time, and it covers the screen with an alert telling you the iPhone is too close. The screen stays covered until you move it back past that distance.

A few details matter. It arrived with iOS 17 and iPadOS 17, and it is switched on by default for children under 13 in a Family Sharing group, which tells you who Apple really built it for. It only works on devices with that Face ID camera. And, importantly, it measures distance only. No photos or videos are taken or kept. The camera is acting as a ruler, not an eye.

Why did Apple build it?

Because how close a child holds a screen is one of the few things about screen use that a parent can actually influence, and it may matter for their eyes over the long run.

Long stretches of very near focus tire young eyes, and a lot of close-up "near work", screens very much included, is one of the things researchers connect to rising short-sightedness in children. It is not the only factor, and it is not a reason to panic over a ten-minute video. But distance is a lever within reach, which is exactly why a feature like this earns its place. We go into the full picture, the recommended distance and the reasons little ones drift so close, in our guide to safe screen distance for children.

The number Apple landed on, 12 inches, is not unique to them. It is roughly an arm's length, the same threshold eye doctors tend to suggest. So when you go looking for an Android version, that 30 cm mark is the thing you are really trying to reproduce.

Does Android have a built-in Screen Distance?

Mostly not, though that is slowly starting to change. There is no Android version of Screen Distance that is standard across phones the way Apple's is across iPhones. A few recent models have begun adding their own take. The latest OnePlus phones, the OnePlus 15 and 15R on OxygenOS 16, have an Eye Comfort Reminders setting tucked into the display options. Switch it on and, alongside a couple of other eye nudges, it shows a small pill-shaped alert at the top of the screen when the phone has been held too close for a while. It is a welcome addition, with two catches. It lives on those recent OnePlus models rather than on Android at large, and because it judges the distance with the ordinary front camera, it needs reasonably bright surroundings to read a face, so it tends to miss in a dim room or under the covers at night, which is often exactly when a child has the phone pressed too close.

For most Android phones, though, there is still nothing built in, which catches a lot of parents off guard, because it feels like the kind of thing that should come as standard by now.

It is worth knowing that Samsung actually tried, years ahead of Apple. Back in 2016 it released a small app called Safety Screen that covered the screen with a friendly animation when a child held the phone too close. The idea was sound. The follow-through was not, and the app was quietly pulled from the Play Store in 2017 and never replaced. So the built-in option that briefly existed on Android is gone, and what is left is a handful of separate apps you install yourself.

The good news is that those apps can do the job well, and one or two of them do it better than Apple's version for the youngest children. The reasons take a moment to explain.

What can an Android parent use instead?

This is the part you came for. There are a few real options, and we compare them properly in our roundup of screen-distance apps for Android. The short tour:

There is iVisionGuard, a private distance app that flashes a warning and beeps when you move too close, a fine pick for an older child or for your own eyes. There is Eyespro, from the Kroha team, which pairs a distance nudge with a blue-light filter for general eye comfort. And there is our own app, Guby, built specifically for children roughly two to eight.

We will be straight with you about that last one being ours. Guby uses the front camera, on the device, to sense when the phone has come in too close, and instead of a worded warning a friendly owl turns up and gently covers the screen, stepping aside the moment your child moves it back. It is free during early access, it does not record anything, and you choose which apps it minds so it rests the rest of the time. You can see how it works on the how it works page.

Is a text warning right for a pre-reader?

This is the real difference between Apple's feature and what a young child needs, and it is easy to miss.

Apple's Screen Distance covers the screen with a message. So does the iPhone do the right thing? For an older child or an adult, yes, completely. But a three-year-old cannot read "iPhone is too close, move it farther away". To them it is just a wall of letters where their video used to be, which is confusing at best and a reason to cry at worst. The mechanism is excellent. The message lands on the wrong audience.

A young child reads pictures long before words. A character that appears and gently hides the screen, then disappears the second the phone moves back, needs no reading and no explanation. Move it away, the show comes back. That is a rule a two-year-old can absorb in an afternoon, and it is the one part of the puzzle a worded alert can't solve.

So if you have an older child, Apple's approach, or a straightforward Android distance app, is plenty. If you have a little one, look for the version that talks in pictures instead. That, more than any feature list, is what decides whether the thing actually works at the age you need it to.

Whichever way you go, none of this has to be high-tech. A phone propped on a stand a little further back quietly fixes most of it with no app at all, something we cover in the simplest fix for kids' screen distance.