Have you ever wanted to be able to scan NFC tags when your phone screen is off? That's not a possibility as there are security risks in doing so - imagine if someone could trigger a mobile payment from your smartphone while the screen is off? There are other security risks as well, but the bottom line is that it's not possible to activate and read NFC tags while your smartphone screen is off anyway. That is, without root access. NFCScreenOff by XDA Member lapwat is a Magisk Module that you can enable on your phone to always read NFC tags even when your screen is locked.

While this may be useful for those who use NFC tags in their home for automation, you can't use it for in-store contactless payments as it breaks SafetyNet. It is not a systemless modification, as it directly patches and modifies the system NfcNci.apk in order to always return true when it polls whether the screen is unlocked or not. It should work on most Android 9 and Android 10 devices, though there is a chance that it may not work on specific smartphones. The developer hopes that in the future, the mod can be done systemless to allow for mobile payments.

If you want to install the NFCScreenOff Magisk module, you can check out both the XDA thread and the GitHub repository below. You can simply flash the Magisk module as you would any other!

NFCScreenOff XDA threadNFCScreenOff GitHub