NotifyBuddy uses your phone’s AMOLED display as a notification LED

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When OnePlus was designing the OnePlus 6T, one of the features they decided to cut was the notification LED. Both the OnePlus 7 and OnePlus 7 Pro also lack notification LEDs, but OnePlus added an edge lighting effect to compensate. We’ve seen multiple third-party applications that show notifications on the phone’s display, and today we’re highlighting another one. NotifyBuddy by XDA Member HarshBoy99 is a fairly new app that was published late last month on our forums and on Google Play, and it’s already gained a decent following with over 10,000 downloads.

The application was designed for the OnePlus 6T, but it should work on most Android smartphones running Android Oreo and above. It’s recommended that you use this app on a phone with an OLED display so that the notification lighting doesn’t cause the entire screen to be lit up. In case you’re worried about burn-in, the developer has implemented burn-in protection by occasionally shifting the area where the notification lighting appears. Here’s a video of how the app looks on the OnePlus 6T:

Installation is simple. First, install the app from Google Play. Next, disable any ambient display settings on your phone, whitelist the app from Doze mode’s battery optimization settings so it doesn’t get killed in the background, and enable the app’s NotificationListener service. Finally, customize which apps you want to show the makeshift notification LED for.

Note that since the phone technically doesn’t sleep, you may experience idle battery drain. Some users in the XDA thread report minimal drain while others report a lot. An app like this shouldn’t cause too much battery drain, so hopefully, these issues get sorted out for everyone. Visit the XDA thread to give feedback directly to the developer.