Always On Edge Lighting & AOD

Review by eFreeware

Phones have largely stopped telling us anything with a light. The tiny LED that once blinked for a message is gone from most handsets, and a glance at a dark screen now reveals nothing about who wrote, what arrived or whether anything needs attention. You either wake the display or you miss it.

Always On Edge Lighting & AOD from Dubiaz is built around that gap. It is a free personalization app, available since June 2018 and rated 3.5 from more than 196,000 ratings, with over ten million installs behind it. The pitch is straightforward: put the light back, and let you decide exactly how it behaves.

There are no ads, and the app does offer in-app purchases alongside its free download.

A notification light you design yourself

The core of the app is notification lighting. When something arrives, the app can light up the edge of the screen, the border around it, or the area around the front camera hole, and you choose which of those applies. The developer describes it as working either inside the system's always on display, independently of it, or both, with a tap-to-light behavior as one of the options.

The interesting part is the granularity. Colors and styles can be assigned per app, but also per contact or account name, so a message from one person can look nothing like a message from another. Placement can even change with screen state, so the lighting might ring the camera hole while the screen is on and run around the full edge once it goes dark.

Control extends to what should not light up. A block list keeps chosen people from triggering anything, and the reverse is possible too: an app can be set to stay dark for everything except one sender you care about. There is a reminder mode that repeats the lighting every few seconds with an optional sound alert, and a mixer option that cycles through the colors of whatever notifications are currently pending.

The app also lets you set conditions under which it holds back, such as while the device is charging, when the battery is low, or during sleep hours, with finer choices available within those. Brightness is adjustable independently of the lighting method, and lights can be set bright while clocks and notification icons stay dim.

Edge effects beyond messages

The app produces edge effects for other events as well: plugging in a charger, an ongoing or outgoing call, music playback, and the wallpaper on screen. The same placement choices apply here, whether that is the whole perimeter, the camera cutout, or both, along with a set of LED-style animations.

This is where the app starts to feel less like a replacement for a missing LED and more like a layer of visual feedback across the phone. Someone who keeps the handset face up on a desk gets a lot out of that; the screen becomes a status surface rather than something you have to wake and interrogate.

The developer also mentions an accessibility angle, noting that the app's main purpose is not to serve as an accessibility tool, but that deaf or hearing impaired users can rely on the lighting to see which app a notification came from and who sent it. That is a reasonable secondary use of color-coded alerts.

The always on display, stock or custom

There are two layers of always on display support here. The first adds features to the system's own AOD, such as showing it only when a notification arrives, only while charging, or for a few minutes after the phone is locked. The second is a custom ambient display the app draws itself while the device is locked, with a clock plus notification icons, a preview panel and battery status.

Those widgets can appear together with the edge lighting or on their own, which matters because it means the lighting and the information panel are not a package deal. You can run the clock and battery readout without any border effects, or the other way around.

Two smaller pieces round out the display side. A notification ticker shows a brief line of text around the camera cutout or in the status bar, which is useful when a silent notification arrives while you are already using the phone and you would rather read it than pull down the panel. And a home screen widget lists current notifications, giving you a way to open them right after unlocking.

Animated wallpapers and the look of the thing

The app includes live wallpapers animated by code rather than video, grouped into categories such as nature, romantic and technical, with adjustable colors and the option to use your own images. It is a side feature rather than the centerpiece, but it fits the overall idea of a phone that looks and behaves the way you configured it.

Recent updates point in the same direction: a neon style, a reworked emoji cascade, better background selection and clock sizing, plus notification LED styles and a ticker, reminder ringtones and priority handling. The app was last updated in October 2026, so work on it has continued well past its 2018 release.

What it asks of you, and what it costs

The most important thing to understand is that this is a deep settings app. The developer's own summary of it is a long list of options, and the lighting behavior is spread across per-app rules, per-contact rules, screen states, event types and restriction conditions. Getting a result you like means working through those choices rather than toggling one switch.

That depth is the selling point and the friction at the same time. If you want a single light for everything, you will be dealing with flexibility you never use. If you want a different color for each person who matters and a different pattern for calls and charging, the options are there.

It is free to download and shows no ads, and there are in-app purchases available inside the app. The rating sits at 3.5 across a very large number of ratings, which suggests a broad mix of experiences among the people who have tried it.

One further note from the developer: some functions depend partly or fully on Android's Accessibility Service API. That is worth reading about in the app itself before you turn anything on, since it is the mechanism behind features.

A fit for phone owners who want control

The people who will get the most from this app are those who miss the notification LED and are willing to spend an evening setting rules to get it back in a more capable form. Anyone who assigns meaning to color, whether that is work versus family or one important contact versus everyone else, has an obvious use for per-app and per-contact lighting.

It also suits users who keep the phone on a desk or nightstand and want the locked screen to carry information, and those who prefer a phone that looks customized rather than stock. The animated wallpapers and the ambient display widgets serve that instinct directly.

Where it will feel like more than you asked for is with anyone who wants a simple, immediate result from a personalization app. The developer has built something with a lot of dials, and the value of those dials depends entirely on whether you intend to turn them.

Setting up your own light show

I would treat Always On Edge Lighting & AOD as a project rather than a quick install. The app is free, carries no ads, and gives you per-app and per-contact lighting, edge effects for calls, charging, music and wallpaper, both stock and custom always on display widgets, a notification ticker and animated wallpapers, with in-app purchases available if you want them.

The trade-off is the time it takes to configure all of that, and the fact that the appeal rests on how much you care about a phone that signals in color. If you have missed the little blinking light since it disappeared from your handset, this is a thorough way to bring it back on your own terms.

What's new in version 9.7.6

* Fix settings not saved. * Neon Style and renewed Emoji cascade. * Enhance background selection. * Enhance clock sizing. * Major fixes and improvements. * Notification LED styles & Notification Ticker. * Reminder Ringtones & Notify Priority. * Unique Animated Wallpapers. * Work with/in AOD or without, as you wish!. * Tap To Light with AOD Tap To Show. * Lighting Reminder/Repeater. * Customize per contact, account.. * Lighting when listening to music, calls, charging, live Wallpaper..