- Android 15 adds support for placing widgets on the lock screen, but only on tablets.
- Despite that, the lock screen widgets feature actually works quite well on smartphones.
- We recorded a video that demonstrates what lock screen widgets look like on phones.
The upcoming Android 15 update won’t have a ton of new features for tablets, but that’s because some of the bigger changes are still hidden. Take lock screen widgets as an example: even though the feature is nearly fully functional, it won’t be part of the first stable release of Android 15 that’s set to roll out very soon. When it eventually does roll out, though, it’ll unfortunately be limited to tablets. But what would it look like if Google didn’t limit lock screen widget support to tablets? We activated the feature on a Pixel phone running Android 15 to find out.
In case you missed it, earlier today we published a closer look at lock screen widgets in Android 15 that reveals the current status of this feature. Compared to when we first showed it off in April, there’s now a better visual hint at where to swipe to surface the glanceable hub, there’s no longer visual overlap between lock screen UI elements and widgets, and there’s no longer any obstructions preventing widgets from being interacted with. While we admittedly didn’t spend much time with the feature, it was obviously much further along than when we last took a look at it, leading us to believe it could make an appearance in an upcoming quarterly platform release of Android 15 at the earliest.