Do you ever feel like the person next to you on the subway is staring at your phone and reading your texts? Of course you do, because we all glance at other people’s phones and tablets during our boring commutes. I do, anyway. BlackBerry has a solution.
BlackBerry has a new app called Privacy Shade that covers your screen in darkness, except for the little part you actually want to see. There’s only one line of text or even just a few words visible on your phone at a time. That way you can read your secret documents while stopping nosy people from seeing exactly what you’re doing. It is, of course, a bit paranoid and silly to look at your phone through an imaginary periscope; as the app comes from stodgy BlackBerry, they’re probably aiming at high-status professionals who carry briefcases and deal with sensitive information. Which is not me, who deals with tweets.
You could also consider it a way to help you focus, since you can only read a couple lines of text at at time. Like in grade school when you’d put a piece of paper on a page to keep your place. Or for reading at night when you want a mostly-dark screen.
The app is designed for Blackberry devices but you should be able to use it on any Android by manually installing the Blackberry Manager app (you can find the APK here), as suggested by The Next Web.
BlackBerry Privacy Shade | Google Play Store