I stopped walking into poles by using this hidden Android feature

I used to roll my eyes at people who set reminders for the most ordinary things. Reminding myself to drink water or put down my phone felt like something to tell a child and not a grown adult.

But I'd caught myself unconsciously bending so far forward that my chin nearly touched my chest. It made me aware of my digital habits beyond eye protection.

Blue light wasn't the only screen habit I needed to manage on my new phone. But I'm determined to leave none unaddressed.

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By  Jon Gilbert

Heads up, or you'll run into a pole

Worse, you'll ruin your posture

Phone use and multitasking rarely mix well. I would know. I once took an unhappy dive into a gutter while doing both in my university days.

Beyond accidents, these micro-habits affect your posture with each unconscious step. The findings from recent cervical spine research were eye-opening.

Tilting your neck forward by just 15 degrees places an estimated 12 kilograms of force on the cervical spine. It increases to 27 kilograms at 60 degrees.

Walking prolongs the period your neck is in a flexed position. So, it's unsurprising that it changes your gait and muscle activity while increasing strain over time.

Yet, I prided myself on being a multitasker. So, I usually walk while checking directions or doing other tasks. Occasionally, I'd get flashes of tech neck and adjust myself.

Poor posture is a sensitive topic for me because I used to have a noticeable slouch. So, it was almost comical that I wore my solution while repeating the problems.

Eventually, I decided my manually selective reminders weren't enough. The phone itself was a hindrance to my attention. So, the solution had to literally flash on my phone screen.

Android's Digital Wellbeing menu exists to tackle one of mobile's worst habits: not looking up. It retained familiar features I love, including Bedtime Mode and Focus Mode.

You've probably never touched Heads Up. It's almost annoying how simplistic the feature is. Habit changes rarely come from a single breakthrough. But several small nudges working together help them happen faster.

In your phone's settings, go to Digital Wellbeing & parental controls > Heads Up to access it.

I pair Heads Up with Bedtime Mode, Focus Mode, app lock tools, and YouTube exercises to create timely reminders that make it hard to look at my phone unnecessarily.

Setting it up takes seconds. It detects when you're walking with your device's accelerometer and that you're actively interacting with it. Then it nudges you with notifications to look up while in motion.

Physical Activity and Notifications are non-optional settings, so I can't turn them off. But I did disable my Location setting because it's optional, even though enabling it would've made a difference in accuracy.

I don't like granting location access unless I have to. Google doesn't have the best privacy track record right now, and has faced years of lawsuits from state attorneys general over location tracking practices.

Too much motion makes me sick

But keeping tiny on-screen dots in my line of sight helps

I'll never be tired of living in the future with a smaller Android brand. Half of the features trickling down from Google and the bigger flagship names are usually already on my device.

Motion Sickness Relief Display is one of those settings. It displays moving dots along the edges of my screen. I've had it on my phone since Infinix shipped it with XOS 16 in February 2026.

Google's version was discovered in 2024 and was called Motion Cues. It was eventually renamed Motion Assist. It still hasn't landed on Google Pixels as of this writing.

That aside, I get motion sickness a lot. It's an unpleasant feeling to describe if you haven't had it. I would say it's a queasy, rising nausea in my gut.

Reading on a phone screen or on an empty stomach makes it worse almost instantly. The biology behind it has to do with a sensory mismatch.

Your inner ear is alert to the vehicle moving, but your eyes remain fixed on the stationary phone screen. The mismatch between those signals is believed to trigger motion sickness.

The Motion Sickness Relief Display feature gives me the best of both worlds, where I can glance at my phone during a ride without reaction.

Moving dots appear on either side of the screen and target my peripheral vision. They dance in a way that matches the movement my body is feeling, which is meant to ease the internal conflict.

Google has included a customization menu for the motion cues on Google Pixel phones, according to leaks. Although you can't see what's inside it, I'm hoping I can adjust the size of the motion dots.

I'd also like to change the density or number of dots around the screen edges. Infinix's implementation is slightly stripped back. You choose whether the dots always appear or only while you're in a vehicle.

Regardless, I enjoy the convenience of turning on the feature through its Quick Settings shortcut. Go to Settings > Accessibility & Features to use the feature.

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Keep your eyes on the road

It's hard for me to talk about digital well-being without reflecting on my physical health.

I know how easily my bad screen habits have compounded over the past few years. Prolonged near-screen work alone has made me myopic.

Apparently, even my blink rate was guilty of hurting my eyesight. So, I was happy to learn that artificial intelligence models like Gemini can help me build personalized tools to manage my habits.