Here’s a very first look at lock screen widgets in Android 15 – Android Authority

Widgets allow you to quickly access shortcuts or information for your favorite apps right from your Android home screen. Android widgets have been around since Android version 1.5 in 2009, but you can only add them to the home screen of most devices. Android also used to allow you to add widgets to the lock screen, but that feature was removed with the release of Android 5.0 in late 2014. Now, nearly a decade later, Google is working to bring back widgets on the lock screen in the coming months. Android 15 Update. Although the feature hasn’t been released yet, I managed to enable it early in the first beta to give you a preview of the lock screen widgets in Android 15.

Before we see what lock screen widgets look like in Android 15, I need to mention a few things. First of all, this practice was recorded on a device running Android 15 beta 1. Beta 1 is just one of four planned beta releases, which means a lot can change between now and the stable release of Android 15 later this year. Second, the lock screen widget functionality is clearly unfinished, with several glaring UI bugs. Most notably, some lock screen UI elements, such as the clock, are overlaid on top of the widget screen. Finally, lock screen widgets are currently only available on devices that support Android’s Hub Mode feature. This includes some tablets like the Pixel Tablet, but excludes book-style foldables like the Pixel Fold as well as all Pixel smartphones.

With that being said, let’s take a look at the current status of lock screen widget support in Android 15. The first thing you need to do is enable the feature by going to Settings > Hub Mode and toggle “Show widgets on lock screen”. There is another option you can enable called “allow any widget on lock screen”, which does exactly what it implies. Without this, only widgets with categories set to KEYGUARD can be added to the lock screen. KEYGUARD is a category of widgets introduced by Google in Android 4.2 – the version of the operating system that first introduced support for lock screen widgets – that very few apps use today.

Once you’ve enabled lock screen widgets in Settings, you can access the widget area (called the “visible hub”) by swiping in from the right edge of the screen locking. The first time you access the visible hub, you will see a card with a button to add a widget. After dismissing the card once, it will never appear again, but you can add widgets later by long-pressing anywhere and then tapping the “Customize Widgets” button that appears at the very top.

Pressing either button opens a widget editor screen where widgets can be added, removed or rearranged (but unfortunately not resized). However, before you can access the widget editor screen, you need to unlock your device. This ensures that no one else can add a widget displaying your private data without your consent. Once you have added the widgets you want, you can take a look at them without unlocking your device.

If I had to guess why Google is limiting lock screen widget support to tablets running Android 15, I’d say it’s because tablets are actually the only devices with screens large enough to display multiple widgets on a single page without resizing any of them. Samsung has managed to integrate widgets into the phones’ lock screen, but it only allows a few hand-picked options unless you use a separate, optional Good Lock module. A better approach might be to move the At a Glance “widget” to the bottom of the lock screen and integrate third-party app views, a la Live Activities in iOS. There are some indications that Google is trying this approach, but whether it will follow through remains to be seen.

Either way, I’ll be keeping a close eye on the development of lock screen widget support in Android 15, as there’s still a way to go before it’s ready for prime time .

Special thanks to the developer Kieron Quinn for his help in getting this feature working!