Android 15 might bring back lock screen widgets

Enlarge / Jelly Bean is back! (credit: Andrew Cunningham)

It sure looks like Android 15 is going to have lock screen widgets. The Android 14 QPR2 beta landed the other day, and Mishaal Rahman over at Android Authority found a hidden unfinished feature that brings back lock screen widgets. We've expected this to happen since Apple's big lock screen widget release with iOS 16.

Rahman found a new "communal" space feature that resembles lock screen widgets. After enabling the feature and swiping in from the right of the lock screen, a pencil icon will pop up. Tapping the icon opens up a widget list, allowing you to move some widgets to the lock screen. Right now, in this unfinished state, the default lock screen clock and notification panel UI don't know how to get out of the way yet, so you get a pile of widgets with the usual lock screen UI on top. It's a mess.

Lock screen widgets... sort of. It's early. (credit: Android Authority)

Any time one smartphone operating system does something, the other tends to copy it, and iOS added lock screen widgets in 2022. Two years later is plenty of time for Google to adjust and copy the feature. The thing is, Android added lock screen widgets in 2012 with Android 4.2. Google removed the feature two years later in Android 5.0, so really, this is Android copying iOS copying Android. Some of this code is apparently making a comeback, as all the widgets available to the lock screen were ones that still had the 10-year-old "keyguard" flag set for Android 4.2.