Eyecon: Look Away, It Pauses

Eyecon pauses the video when you stop looking at the screen, and starts it again when you look back.

Someone talks to you. You reach for something. You fall asleep. The video keeps playing, you miss a few minutes, and then you drag the progress bar around hunting for the spot where you left off. Eyecon removes that whole loop.

HOW IT WORKS

The front camera checks one thing: whether your eyes are on the screen. When they are not, Eyecon sends a pause to whatever app is playing. When you look back it resumes, and rewinds a few seconds, because the moment you looked away is already gone by the time the pause lands.

Eyecon plays nothing itself. It controls the apps you already use, with the same commands your headphone button sends.

NO INTERNET, NOTHING LEAVES YOUR PHONE

Eyecon has no internet access. It never asks Android for it, so it has no way to send anything anywhere. You do not have to take our word for it: look at the permission list on this page, internet is not on it.

Camera frames are analysed by your own phone's processor and dropped straight away. No photo or video is saved. Eyecon does not recognise faces and has no idea who you are. It answers one question: looking, or not looking. And because none of this needs a connection, the app works exactly the same in flight mode.

WHAT YOU GET

- Automatic pause and resume
- Rewind on resume, by an amount you choose
- Sleep mode: if you fall asleep watching, playback stops and Eyecon remembers where you got to
- A Quick Settings tile
- Statistics kept on your phone: how long playback waited for you
- Eleven languages

THE TWO PERMISSIONS

Camera, to tell whether you are looking. It opens only while a video Eyecon can control is playing, and closes when there is nothing to control.

Notification access, because Android only reveals which app is playing to apps registered as a notification listener. There is no narrower permission for media. Eyecon's listener is empty: it implements no notification callback, so no notification text ever reaches it.

BATTERY

The camera is only open while something is playing, and even then it does not run at a constant rate: the sampling eases off when your head stays still, and eases off further while it waits for you to come back. If you do not return within four minutes of a pause, the camera shuts down completely.

A sample measurement: Poco X7 Pro, medium screen brightness, a twelve minute video with fifteen pauses and as many resumes in that time. The phone's charge fell by 2.5% in total. That figure includes the screen and the video itself, not only Eyecon's share. The pauses were frequent on purpose, far more often than normal viewing produces.

WHAT DOES NOT WORK

Eyecon can only control apps that publish standard playback controls in the notification panel. Short-form video does not publish them, so YouTube Shorts, Instagram Reels and TikTok cannot be paused. If you are unsure about an app, pull down the notification shade while it plays: if play and pause controls are there, Eyecon can work with it.

ONE PURCHASE

Eyecon is a paid app. You buy it once and everything is included from the first launch. No subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no account.

Privacy policy: https://sites.google.com/view/eyecon-privacy