A study timer that keeps counting with the screen off
Open the reviews of any popular study timer and you will find the same story: "I studied for 2 hours straight but it recorded 20 minutes", "the timer stopped when my screen turned off", "it asks every few hours whether I'm still studying and stops if I don't answer". For a stopwatch, this is the one job. Here is why it breaks, and how to pick an app where it doesn't.
Why timers stop on Android
Most apps count time with a loop: every second, add one to a counter. That loop lives inside the app process. Android is free to freeze or kill that process whenever the screen is off and the phone wants to save battery, and manufacturers (Samsung, Xiaomi, Huawei, OnePlus) are more aggressive than stock Android. When the process is frozen, the counter stops. When it is killed, the counter is gone. Some apps try to fight this with a background service and a permanent notification; it helps, but the same battery optimizers can still kill the service after a few hours, which is where the "are you still studying?" pop-ups come from.
The fix is not a better loop
A reliable study stopwatch does not count at all. It stores the moment you pressed start, and whenever it needs to show elapsed time it subtracts that from the clock. The process can be frozen, killed, or the phone rebooted; the start time is still on disk, and the math is still right. This is how StudyTick works: press start, the timestamp is saved immediately, and the number you see is always now minus start. The notification you see while recording uses the system chronometer, which the OS itself updates, so it keeps ticking even when the app is not running.
How to check any app in 30 seconds
- Start the timer, note the time on the clock.
- Turn the screen off for 10 minutes. Then force-stop the app from Settings → Apps.
- Open the app. If it shows about 10 minutes and is still running, it computes from the start time. If it shows less, or has stopped, it was counting in-process.
What else to look for
- Stop from the notification bar, so you do not need to unlock the phone to end a session.
- A cap on runaway sessions. If you fall asleep with the timer on, a 12-hour cap is more honest than a 23-hour record.
- Records saved locally the moment you stop, not queued for a server that may be down.
- Manual correction for the times it still goes wrong: type the start and end and move on.
StudyTick
StudyTick is a study timer built around the start-time approach. It works offline with no account, tracks time by subject, shows the running time in the notification bar with a stop button, saves every session on your phone, and lets you fix a record by typing the time. It is free and ad-supported; there are no ads on the timer screen while you study.