Gloam

Android's brightness slider stops at a floor. On most phones that floor is still too bright to read in a properly dark room. Gloam is the range underneath it.

HOW IT WORKS

Gloam takes the backlight down to the lowest level your phone allows, then draws a shade over the screen to go the rest of the way. One control moves both halves, from barely dimmed to very nearly dark.

WHAT YOU GET

- Dim past the floor. One slider, well below what the system lets you set.
- Warmth. A second control tints the screen, and a colour bar picks the tint, from amber to deep red.
- Controls where you are. Tap the notification and a small panel opens over whatever you are reading. It sits above the shade, so it stays readable at full dim. The app icon opens a compact version of the same controls.
- A schedule. Two clock times, or sunset to sunrise, moving with the season. Sunset is estimated from your time zone, or from your approximate location if you allow it.
- Auto-off. A shade you start by hand comes down after a while you choose, so you never unlock a phone you cannot read the next morning. Set it to Never if you would rather it stayed on. A scheduled shade comes down at the end of its window.
- Back after a restart. A shade that was on when the phone switched off comes back when it starts.
- Works over everything. Other apps, the launcher, your browser, your reader.

EVERY FEATURE IS FREE

No ads. No account. No sign-up. No server. No subscription, no premium tier, and nothing behind a paywall. There is no paid version to keep alive, so a feature either ships to everyone or it does not ship.

NO NETWORK AT ALL

Gloam does not request the internet permission, so it cannot phone home even by accident. It keeps its settings on your phone. Your approximate location is read only if you ask the schedule to use it, kept on the phone rounded to about 11 km, and left out of backups.

WHAT IT CANNOT DO

Gloam does not make the screen emit less light than its backlight floor. No installed app can. That floor belongs to the display driver. Gloam gets the backlight down to it and puts a dark layer in front of it. The result reads far dimmer, but the panel is still lit.

System permission dialogs, some secure screens and the lock screen draw above every app's overlay by design, so they appear at your phone's own brightness. That is Android protecting you from apps like this one.

The shade never takes your taps. Every touch passes straight through to whatever is underneath, and while it is on there is always a notification that leads to the controls and their Stop button. An overlay drawn over every other app has to be impossible to get stuck behind.

Some phones stop it. Aggressive battery managers, Xiaomi's especially, will kill the service on their own. If the shade vanishes without you touching anything, that is the battery settings on your phone rather than Gloam.

Gloam is a dimmer. It makes no claim about your eyes, your sleep or your health.

PERMISSIONS

- Display over other apps. This is the whole mechanism. The shade is that window.
- Notifications. The ongoing notification is how you reach the controls and turn the shade off, and on Android 13 and up it does not appear until you allow it.
- Foreground service. Keeps the shade on screen while you use other apps.
- Run at startup. Puts back a shade that was on, and sets the schedule again, after a restart.
- Approximate location, optional. Only for sunset to sunrise, only if you allow it, never precise and never in the background.

Source available, built in the open: github.com/srednimax/gloam