Samsung's Safety Screen App Protects Your Eyes, Prevents Vision Damage

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 20 Apr 2016

You're holding your phone or tablet too close to your face, and your eyes are paying for it. Luckily for you, Samsung came up with Safety Screen, an app that can help prevent vision damage by telling you when your face is too close to the screen.

Samsung promotes Safety Screen as an app for kids, as a means for parents to ensure that their kids hold their mobile devices at an ideal viewing distance from their eyes. But after I installed Safety Screen on my phone, I came to realize that kids aren’t the only ones who hold their devices too close. Adults do that too.

Why do you need an app like Safety Screen?

The simple answer is… to protect your eyes, obviously. If you want a more detailed answer, one is provided by Tarek Sabbagh, Head of IT and Mobile Division at Samsung Gulf Electronics.

"The usage of electronic devices, such as mobiles and tablets, is increasing extremely fast, within all age groups, from entertainment such as watching movies, to gaming and lately education where many schools started using the tablets in their curriculum," said Tarek Sabbagh.

"We noticed that children spend extended time using their devices, holding them too close to their eyes, which is not ideal and might cause damage to their sight. Hence, in Samsung, as leaders in innovation, we also care for the health and safety of our consumers. Therefore, we are introducing today an innovative app that helps protect users eyes by reminding them to [keep] their devices at a safe distance."




How does Safety Screen work?

Safety Screen uses your Android’s sensors to detect the distance between your face and the screen. If you're holding the device too close, Safety Screen brings up a prompt that tells you your face is too close to the screen.

Getting Safety Screen up and running is an incredibly simple process. Here’s a visual guide.

This is what you’ll see when you launch the app. Move the toggle to ON to activate Safety Screen.



Your kid might try to deactivate the app. To ensure this doesn’t happen, you’ll have to enter a password. Just make sure you pick a strong one. Stay away from any password that will be cracked faster than you can say oops.



And that’s it. Safety Screen has been activated and it's ready to go.



From now on, it will notify you if you’re holding your device too close to your eyes. The notification is a cute animation that looks like this.



Move the screen away from your face and Safety Screen will tell you you’re doing a great job.




Where can I get Safety Screen?


Samsung’s Safety Screen app is available for all Android users on Google Play.

The app is free and works with any device that runs Android 4.3 Jellybean or newer.


In related news...

Safety Screen won’t protect your eyes if you spend too much time in front of your PC. But these free tools will! They will remind you to take a break and give your eyes a chance to relax, something that’s quite important if you want to avoid digital eye strain.

Speaking about that, here’s an infographic that presents pretty much everything you need to know about digital eye strain.



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