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Monitoring Settings

This section controls how monitoring runs day to day: what the monitored place is called in your alerts, what happens when the app is opened, Bluetooth scan aggressiveness, and the device's screen behavior while monitoring.

Details​

Location Setting​

Despite the name, this has nothing to do with location permission. It is a free-text name for the place being monitored — "Home", "Mom's house" — and Sentinel Circle puts it into the alert messages it sends, so a caregiver reading a text knows which place it is about.

Location permission is granted in the setup wizard; see The Setup Wizard & Permissions.

Startup Behavior​

Controls what happens when the Sentinel Circle app is opened, and nothing else. Two choices:

  • Always Start — opening the app starts monitoring.
  • Remember Last State (default) — opening the app resumes whatever state it was in when it was last closed.

Two things people expect to find here are somewhere else:

  • Restarting after a reboot is automatic and is not configurable. If monitoring was running when the phone lost power, Sentinel Circle re-arms itself when the phone comes back up (and after an app update). You do not have to set anything for that, and this setting does not switch it off.
  • Trigger on startup is a checkbox in the Start Monitoring dialog, not here. It decides whether a sensor that is already in the unsafe position the moment monitoring starts — the Wi-Fi network is not in range yet, say — counts as a real alert or is quietly taken as the starting baseline. The choice you make in that dialog is remembered as the default for next time.

Bluetooth Scan Mode​

Startup Behavior and Bluetooth Scan Mode sections

Tunes how aggressively the Bluetooth radio scans for configured beacons. A more aggressive mode detects a beacon going out of range faster but uses more battery; a lighter mode is gentler on battery but slower to notice a change. If you're using a dedicated, always-plugged-in monitoring phone, a more aggressive mode is usually fine — see Power & Battery notes.

Keep Screen On​

Off by default. Keeps the display on continuously while monitoring is active and Sentinel Circle is the app on screen, instead of following the phone's normal screen-timeout. This makes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth detection more reliable, because Android checks for networks and devices less often once the screen is off. Switching to another app lets the screen follow its normal timeout again — that's what the "Return to the app automatically" sub-option below is for.

Only use this while the phone is plugged into a charger — it noticeably increases battery use.

Return to the app automatically (Auto-Return)​

A sub-option shown indented under Keep Screen On, on by default. It only does anything while Keep Screen On is also on — turning Keep Screen On off turns this off with it, whatever this switch is set to.

Asked at your first Start Monitoring. The first time you press Start Monitoring with a monitor that uses a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or unrecognized-device sensor, Sentinel Circle asks "Keep the screen on while monitoring?". It has an "Enable Keep Screen On" checkbox, ticked by default, and — beneath it, only while that is ticked — a "Return to the app automatically" checkbox showing this setting's current value. "Continue" saves both. It is asked once (and one more time after an update that adds a new choice to it); if your monitors only use Email or Notification sensors it is not asked, and if you already switched Keep Screen On on yourself it is not asked either. You can change both later here.

With both on, if you switch away to another app while monitoring is running, Sentinel Circle brings itself back to the screen on its own after 30 seconds. It only tries once per time you leave, so it won't keep popping back up while you're using something else — and it waits rather than interrupts if the screen is off, the phone is locked, or you're on a call, trying again once that clears.

After a reboot or an app update, monitoring resumes by itself. With both switches on, Sentinel Circle also comes back to the screen as soon as the phone is on and unlocked — without the 30-second wait and without the "Back to Sentinel Circle" dialog, because nobody left the app.

On Android 10 and later, this needs the "Display over other apps" permission, but only when both Keep Screen On and Return to the app automatically are turned on. The Start Monitoring permission wizard shows its page whenever both are on. If the permission is missing, or Android still blocks the return, Sentinel Circle falls back to a quiet notification instead — but only if the session includes a Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or unrecognized-device sensor. A session with only Email or Notification sensors shows nothing in that case; the app just stays in the background, though monitoring itself keeps running regardless.

The Back to Sentinel Circle dialog, shown when the app returns on its own: a "?" help icon next to the title, the explanation text, a ticked "Return to the app automatically" checkbox, a red WARNING box, and a note that the setting can be changed later in Application Settings

When the app comes back on its own, it shows a dialog explaining why, with a "Return to the app automatically" checkbox already ticked. This is the one setting you can change from inside that dialog while monitoring is running — everything else, Keep Screen On included, stays locked for the rest of the session, the same as every other setting (see the config-lock rule). Unticking the box and choosing OK turns the setting off immediately; you can turn it back on later here in Monitoring Settings, which is also what the note below the warning tells you. The red WARNING box spells out what turning it off means: the app won't come back by itself, so the screen may go dark once you leave it, and Bluetooth/Wi-Fi detection may be delayed as a result.

The "?" next to the dialog's title opens this same help page — opening it does not dismiss or change the dialog underneath, so you can read the full explanation and still come back to tick or untick the box.

The dialog closes itself after 30 seconds if you don't touch it, and closing on its own changes nothing — touching anything in the dialog, including opening help, keeps it open until you choose OK. If the app is locked, the checkbox is disabled with a reminder to unlock the app first, though the dialog still explains why it came back.

Screen Saver​

The Screen Saver dims what's actually shown after a period of inactivity, to protect the display from burn-in on a phone that's going to sit showing the same screen for a long time. It works whether or not "Keep Screen On" is set — the two settings are independent. See Screen Saver for the modes and options.