Active Aura: What Happens During a Focus Session

When your Aura is active, your phone becomes a focused, quiet space. This guide explains what happens and how to interact with it.

The Aura screen

The main Aura screen shows the Aura name, the remaining time, a progress ring, the active apps as icons, and the actions you can take: return, pause, extend, change apps, or end.

Accessible apps

Only the apps you selected remain fully accessible. All other apps are gently blocked. This is the whitelist principle: the boundary is defined by what you allow, not by a list of what you forbid.

The boundary screen

If you open an app outside your Aura, AuraLock shows a calm screen: "This app is outside your Aura." You can:

• Return to Aura — go straight back to your session
• Leave the Aura — only available if your boundary allows it (Standard ends or pauses; Strict has no exit at all)

The boundary screen does not shame you. It gives you a moment to decide whether this is what you need right now.

Notifications

AuraLock provides a persistent notification while your Aura is active. It shows the remaining time, a Return to Aura action, and a pause action when your boundary allows it.

The notification keeps your Aura one tap away even when you are using a kept-alive app. Session end sounds and vibrations are configurable in Settings. Under Quick Toggles you can turn on the reward chime and vibration for a completed Aura.

Background behavior

AuraLock runs in the background to maintain your focus boundary, keep the timer accurate, and fire scheduled sessions. For reliable operation, ensure:

• Battery optimization is disabled for AuraLock — see the battery optimization guide
• Background activity is allowed — check your manufacturer's background settings
• Autostart is enabled where your device offers it — see autostart

Guardian keeps it reliable

AuraLock's Guardian health check verifies all of this for you. If a permission or battery setting would silently break your boundary, Guardian flags it and offers a one-tap fix. Run it after every device update.

When the session ends

When the timer reaches zero, AuraLock marks the session as complete and shows a summary of what you protected. Then the practice continues: log the session in your journal, review your goal and streak, or start the next Aura.

Why the boundary survives everything

The overlay and the enforcement layer are native Android components, not part of the app’s interface. That matters: a running Aura keeps holding even if the app itself is closed, swiped away, cleared from recents, or its interface process is killed by the system. There is no window of unprotected time to exploit — the boundary does not depend on AuraLock being on screen.

The session’s state — its end time, its staying-alive apps, its boundary — is persisted, so it can be restored after a process restart or a phone reboot with the correct remaining time.

Turning the screen back on

When you wake your phone during an Aura, AuraLock checks what was on screen last. If the last app was one of your staying-alive apps, you are returned straight to it. If it was a blocked app, the boundary screen comes back up. Either way you are never dropped into a blocked app by accident.

What Strict changes while it runs

In a Strict Aura the boundary screen offers Return to Aura and nothing else — no end action, no pause, no emergency option. The persistent notification is equally honest: it shows the remaining time and a way back into the session, and no control that would break the commitment.