What Does The Eye Symbol Mean On Samsung And Android Phones?

A key difference in the Android versus iOS experience is the information density on the screen, especially in the status bar. While iOS opts for a more visually aesthetic and clutter-free UI, Android phones make good use of the space with the various symbols and icons on the screen that you can spot. Common icons include the Wi-Fi and mobile network indicators, but you are also greeted with the icons of apps that have notifications waiting for you.

Lesser-used system features like VPN might sometimes surprise you with a symbol you've never seen before — like a key icon on your Android phone. You might have noticed another interesting symbol on the status bar — an eye-shaped icon. On Samsung phones, this icon indicates a useful set of visual feedback features found in the OS.

Most notably, Smart Scroll is a feature that has been around on Samsung phones for a while. When enabled, the utility automatically scrolls content on the screen when you tilt your head or your phone. You also get Smart Stay, which, like the name suggests, prevents your phone's screen from going dim or turning off while you're looking at it. 

The eye icon serves as an indicator that your Samsung Galaxy smartphone is currently using a combination of sensors, including the front-facing camera, to keep these features running. The exact menu labels will vary depending on your phone's software version, but this is a feature you can toggle off via the Settings app.

Eyes are often used in iconography to also denote some form of privacy-oriented feature or indicator. Modern Android phones will actually alert you if any app or service is currently accessing your phone's camera or microphone. Different brands handle this indicator a bit differently, but typically, if you spot a green icon on your Android phone's screen, it means either the camera or the microphone is active.

Some Android phones may also reserve an eye icon for an eye-saver mode of sorts. Certain apps that use a blue light filter also adopt similar icons. That said, if it's an eye icon on the status bar and you own a Samsung phone, it could only indicate Smart Stay, Smart Scroll, Smart Pause, or Smart Rotate — these are quite niche features that aren't found on other phones by default.

In fact, modern Galaxy smartphones seem to lack Visual Feedback features altogether — leaving you reliant on third-party apps like Caffeine to keep the screen awake. Smart Stay was first debuted all the way back in 2012 with the Samsung Galaxy S3, but the feature seems to have been lost somewhere in the upgrade cycle over the years.

If you look around on the Play Store, you might find third-party solutions that handle auto scrolling, but these typically trigger a continuous scroll action and may not be as elegant or dynamic as Samsung's outgoing Smart Scroll functionality.