Screen overlay is a feature of modern Android smartphones and tablets that allows compatible apps to appear on top of one another. It’s most common in apps like Facebook Messenger, where chat heads can appear when you receive a message, and apps like Twilight, which run color filters over the screen to relieve eye strain and block out harmful blue light late in the day. evening.
Is screen overlay a good thing?
The screen overlay has its uses and many of the more advanced features of modern apps couldn’t work without it. It allows them to “draw” over the application you are using.
Screen overlays allow apps to do more than just send you notifications and continue to interact with and be interacted with, no matter what you’re doing on your device. Without that capability, if you wanted to receive updates from that app, you’d have to open it manually; apps that make visual adjustments to your phone would not work at all.
However, there are cases where a screen overlay could be used maliciously. If a permissions dialog appeared but with an obfuscating screen overlay on top, a user could be tricked into agreeing to something they weren’t aware of.
To prevent Android devices when performing certain functions from warning the user that a screen overlay is being used and preventing them from continuing. In those cases, a warning appears and users will have to disable the screen overlay feature to continue.
What devices are affected?
Screen overlay and its associated problems are not limited to any particular device. The most common errors are found on Samsung and Lenovo devices, but there is no inherent problem with those devices. The fact that these devices are more popular than others does not mean that problems cannot arise in other more specialized Android devices.
If a device supports screen overlay, it is just as susceptible to this type of error as any other.
Android screenshot detected
The most common issue Android users experience when it comes to screen overlay is the “Screen overlay detected” error. Appears when you try to use the Google Play Store to pay for something, open a new app, or change permissions while using a screen overlay. To make sure you’re not doing something malicious, Android displays the “Screen Overlay Detected Warning” which needs to be disabled before you can continue.
Akash Jaiswal/Twitter
Doing so is relatively easy and there are several ways to do it. You can download an app to do it for you, but that won’t help much if you can’t open new apps while there’s a screen overlay. You can also do it manually.
To help you fix your screen overlay issues, be sure to read our guide on how to fix the detected error.
