Tap Shield: Touch Blocker

Tap Shield is a touch blocker for the moments when you want the screen to stay exactly where it is. Start a video, switch on the shield, and it keeps playing while every tap, swipe and pinch is ignored. No more paused shows, surprise calls or apps opened by accident.

Reach for it on the sofa, on a long flight, during a video call, while following a recipe with messy hands, or when you pass the phone to someone to show a photo: the screen stays on the picture you chose.

How it works
1. Allow Tap Shield to display over other apps. This is the permission that places the invisible shield.
2. Tap Lock and pick a start delay of 3, 5, 10 or 15 seconds, or none. Use that moment to open the video and press play.
3. When the show is over, press and hold the small lock button for 2 seconds. A quick poke, a resting palm or a second finger will not open it.

Built for stray touches
• The unlock button fades after a few seconds, so it does not distract from the video. You decide which corner it sits in.
• The display can stay awake while the shield is on, so a long episode never goes dark halfway through.
• A gentle vibration can tell you when the shield comes off.
• Restarting the phone always removes the lock, so you can never get stuck.

Shield only part of the screen
Sometimes you want to keep using an app, such as a game, a reader or a video player, but not hit its menu or the button that leaves it. Draw rectangles over those spots and only they ignore touch; the rest of the screen keeps working. Move and resize each zone, give it a tint so you can see it, and it stays in place when the phone turns sideways.

On and off in a second
• A Quick Settings tile turns the shield on or off from the notification shade.
• While it is on, a notification holds an Unlock button for you. Optional Lock buttons can wait there when the shield is off.
• Light and dark themes.

Your shield habits
• The Today page counts how many days in a row you used the shield.
• Weekly stats show the total shielded time, split between full screen and zones, with one bar per day.
• A monthly calendar marks each day with a lock, and badges appear as you reach milestones such as a 30-minute session or a 7-day streak.
• All of it is worked out on your phone from your own lock history.

Even tighter with screen pinning
Android keeps the status bar, gesture navigation and the power and volume buttons above every app, so on newer versions a stray touch can still reach them. Tap Shield includes a step-by-step guide to screen pinning, a built-in Android feature that keeps one app in front until you unpin it. Pin the video app first, then turn on the shield. A setup check also shows how to stop battery savers from closing the shield in the background.

Free and Premium
The free version gives you the full screen shield, 2 zones, the touch finder, the tile, notification controls, stats, calendar, badges and the pinning guide, and it shows ads. Premium raises the limit to 12 zones, saves several zone layouts (one per game, for example), adds an auto-unlock timer from 5 to 120 minutes, lets the full screen lock ask for a PIN after the hold, and removes all ads. Choose a monthly or yearly plan that renews automatically and can be cancelled anytime in Google Play, or a one-time lifetime purchase.

Permissions, plainly
• Display over other apps: places the see-through layer that swallows touches. Tap Shield does not read what is on screen or anything you type.
• Notifications (Android 13 and newer): shows the Unlock button while the shield is on.
• Tap Shield does not use an accessibility service.

Privacy
Your zones, settings, lock history and PIN stay on your phone, and the PIN is kept only as a salted hash. Anonymous usage statistics and crash reports help us improve the app. Ads in the free version are provided by Google AdMob.

Tap Shield blocks touches. It is not a parental control system and cannot repair screen hardware.