Phones Won’t Support Lock Screen Widgets in Android 15, But Here’s What It Would Look Like Anyway

The upcoming Android 15 update won’t bring many new features for tablets, but that’s because some of the biggest changes are still under wraps. Take lock screen widgets, for example: while the feature is almost fully functional, it won’t be part of the first stable build of Android 15 that’s expected to roll out very soon. However, when it does finally roll out, it will unfortunately be limited to tablets. But what would it look like if Google didn’t limit lock screen widget support to tablets? We enabled the feature on a Pixel phone running Android 15 to find out.

In case you missed it, we published a more detailed look at Lock screen widgets in Android 15 earlier today that reveals the current state of the feature. Compared to when we first showed it off back in April, there’s now a better visual indication of where to swipe to bring up the quick-view hub, there’s no longer any visual overlap between Lock screen UI elements and widgets, and there are no more obstacles preventing interaction with widgets. While we didn’t spend much time with the feature, it was clearly much more advanced than the last time we looked at it, leading us to believe it could make an appearance in an upcoming quarterly release of the Android 15 platform at the earliest.

However, our belief that lock screen widget support will be limited to Android tablets running Android 15 has yet to change. Unfortunately, there’s no indication that Google has any plans to bring this feature to phones. Even so, we were curious to know what, if anything, would prevent lock screen widgets from working on phones running Android 15.

After all, aside from the obvious difference in screen size, there’s no reason why phones can’t technically display Android widgets on the lock screen. Under the hood, Pixel phones and tablets running Android 15 use the same shared codebase, so it’s not like Pixel phones are missing a crucial piece of code that implements support for lock screen widgets.

Additionally, lock screen widgets aren’t displayed alongside other lock screen UI elements like the clock, shortcuts, or notifications. Instead, they’re displayed on their own dedicated page called the At-a-Glance Hub, which is accessed by swiping in from the right edge. This means, in theory, that phones should have enough screen space to display widgets. After all, the At-a-Glance Hub is basically just a home page where only widgets are displayed.

With a bit of tinkering, we managed to find an answer to this question. While there are some obvious issues, particularly with the reordering of widgets, Android 15’s implementation of lock screen widgets works surprisingly well on phones. In fact, it almost seems like Google is actually trying to optimize this experience for phones. The widgets are displayed two by two on the screen directly above the fingerprint icon, for example. Check out the following video to see what I mean.

While I don’t have any evidence to suggest this is the case, I’m hopeful that Google is indeed considering bringing lock screen widgets to phones. This feature obviously makes a lot of sense on tablets, which is why I think it could arrive with the release of the Pixel Tablet 2, but I’m sure some people will also want to put widgets on their phones’ lock screens. After all, some people like to use minimalist home screen launchers, so having a dedicated space for widgets on the lock screen that’s out of sight by default would allow them to use widgets without messing up their home screen. It’s clear that Google already wants to further optimize the lock screen on phones, so adding widget support would be the cherry on top.