Keeping the App Running

Custom Android phones (Xiaomi, Huawei, OPPO, vivo, OnePlus, Meizu, and others) ship with built-in “battery optimization” that defaults to clearing long-running apps — including monitoring tools like ours.

Without the right settings, you might see:

• The app installs fine, but stops blocking after 15 minutes or so
• Screen time stats jump around with gaps in the middle
• The app doesn’t restart automatically after a reboot

3 settings you need to do

The exact paths differ by brand, but they all fall into these 3 categories:

1. Battery optimization → Set Tortoise Time to “Unrestricted”
2. Background activity → Allow Tortoise Time to run in the background
3. Autostart → Allow Tortoise Time to start on boot and to be launched by other apps

When you first launch Tortoise Time, it will automatically walk you through the correct steps for your phone brand. If you skipped that setup, go to Tortoise Time → Settings → “Permission check” to run it again at any time.

What we’ve done on our end

We’re not putting all the responsibility on you. Here’s what we built into the app:

Multi-layer monitoring

We use several layers that back each other up — one is the foreground service you see as the “running” icon, and the others periodically wake the app back up to check, in case the system ever kills it. If one layer goes down, the others pick up.

Auto-restart

Even if the app is forcibly stopped (say, your child goes into system settings and hits “Force Stop”), the app automatically tries to restart and resume guarding — no manual action needed from you.

Usage recovery

Even if the app was killed for a stretch of time, after it restarts it will backfill the usage data from that gap — the child doesn’t get “free” minutes just because the app was offline for 10 minutes.

Still not staying alive?

If you’ve done all the settings, rebooted the phone, and it’s still failing:

1. Run the Permission check again (Tortoise Time → Settings)
2. Go to Tortoise Time → Settings → Feedback and tell us: phone brand / OS version / what you’re seeing
3. We’ve specifically adapted for 8 major brands. If your device is an uncommon model, your feedback helps us improve.

Fallback suggestions

If your device is particularly aggressive (some custom ROMs go further than stock Android):

• Add Tortoise Time to your home screen as a shortcut — opening it once tends to keep monitoring running for a longer stretch
• Open Tortoise Time briefly each evening before bed — resets the monitoring cycle for the next day

Not ideal, but on the most stubborn devices, it buys you extra coverage.

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For details on each permission → App Permissions Explained For emergencies → FAQ