Android’s Lock Screen Widgets: A Revival in Progress
The feature was begrudgingly pulled nine years ago, but it’s coming back to a select handfull of lock screen widgets, thanks to Google’s upcoming Android 15. Available so far only for tablet devices – for the time being, at least – the concept is showing promise in its beta state.
The Evolution of Lock Screen Widgets
The lock screen widgets in Android 15 – if they ever make it to the final version – met their first steps a few months ago when reports emerged that Google was planning to bring back the long-lost feature. I tested its debut earlier this year in the form of the beta version that arrived in April. It was promising, but also buggy. As updates pile up, it would seem that the search-engine giant is continuously polishing the feature in anticipation of its eventual release.
How It Works
The glanceable hub at work; swipe in from the right edge of the locked screen to see the hub.Used by simply swiping in from the right edge which can be slid between the lock state and the glanceable hub – the new ‘glanceable hub’ can be configured by the user with whatever widgets they wish to see, and then expanded to full screen width for browsing exactly as any app.
Recent Improvements
Since the initial beta release, Google has addressed several key issues:
It’s Visual Obstruction: In iOS 6, things like the clock on the lock screen ran up into and obscured the widgets. That’s fixed now: the lock screen and the widget areas are clearly separated.
Interactivity: Static information in earlier versions, but now users can open widget to interact with data directly from lock screen.
Navigation Indicators: The vertical pill-shaped indicator (like the navigation pill) now appears on the right edge of the screen, explicitly indicating whether users can swipe left to access the widgets.
Media playback: An expanded version of the media widget is now displayed when active with improved media controls from the lock screen.
Current Limitations and Future Prospects
The feature has come a long way since then, but still lacks some functionality. (For example, it’s still not possible to resize widgets.) We don’t know whether these limitations will persist, currently, because the feature seems to be exclusive to tablets and no iPhone that Apple makes can currently run iPadOS. That said, we know the Pixel Tablet 2 will be able to run Android, wherever it is intended to debut. More importantly, we have a rough timeframe for the release. If Google follows the same release cycle it used with Foldables, the launch will be the Pixel Tablet 2’s launch. If it does not, then possibly the feature will debut instead with the current crop of Pixel Tablets via a quarterly update to platform.
Though not part of the initial version of Android 15, the lock screen widget is itself an interesting amalgam of past and future Android functionality. There will be an Android 15, after all (it’s due this autumn), so the fact that Google has decided to try, reconsider, and refine something previously jettisoned suggests that it will continue to expand the experience of tablet devices in some profound ways.
The extendable nature of this feature reflects the ongoing innovativeness of Android, finding a balance between nostalgia and functionality to meet the evolving wishes of its user base.
