and you can even interact with the widgets right then and there, without ever having to unlock your phone. Lockscreen Widgets and Drawer lets you add any Android widgets you want onto your lock screen in any arrangement, in fact. It opens the door to all sorts of easily accessible step-savers, ranging from a preview of your inbox to a scrollable glance at a to-do list, a peek ahead at travel plans, or even a detailed view of the current traffic, the latest news headlines, or the upcoming weather forecast. It truly has the potential to transform your Android phone's lock screen and bring a whole new level of usefulness to that area in whatever way makes the most sense for you. The creation's come a long way since that point, though, and it's now really effective and compelling. The app was still relatively early in its development, and it had far too many asterisks and awkward edges for me to actually use it myself, let alone recommend it. Lockscreen Widgets and Drawer has actually been around for a while now, but when I last looked at it - well, frankly, it wasn't that great. Creative name, right?!īut while the moniker may be mundane, the power the app provides is yet another example of the kind of customization and control that only Android makes possible. The secret to bringing widgets onto your Android lock screen this instant is a crafty little app called - wait for it. Widgets, meet the Android lock screen - again In about two minutes, you're gonna have any widget you want on your Android phone's lock screen - no matter what kind of phone you're carrying or what flavor of Android it's running. You're reading this column, after all, and that puts you in a rarefied category of exceptionally curious, capable, and comely Android-adoring organisms.Īnd what a day it is to sport that designation. Luckily, you aren't an average phone-carrying citizen. But it's also far more limiting and useful than a full-fledged widget would be. We've seen the company flip flop plenty and even come back around to forgotten concepts specifically after Apple started offering something similar.īut for now, El Googenthal seems focused on bringing simple shortcuts to the lock screen, with its upcoming Android 14 update. Joe brings that same passion to How-To Geek.Now, it's still entirely possible Google could reverse course and giveth again. If something piques his interest, he will dive into it headfirst and try to learn as much as possible. Outside of technology, Joe is an avid DIYer, runner, and food enthusiast. After several years of jailbreaking and heavily modifying an iPod Touch, he moved on to his first smartphone, the HTC DROID Eris. He got his start in the industry covering Windows Phone on a small blog, and later moved to Phandroid where he covered Android news, reviewed devices, wrote tutorials, created YouTube videos, and hosted a podcast.įrom smartphones to Bluetooth earbuds to Z-Wave switches, Joe is interested in all kinds of technology. He has written thousands of articles, hundreds of tutorials, and dozens of reviews.īefore joining How-To Geek, Joe worked at XDA-Developers as Managing Editor and covered news from the Google ecosystem. Joe loves all things technology and is also an avid DIYer at heart. He has been covering Android and the rest of the Google ecosystem for years, reviewing devices, hosting podcasts, filming videos, and writing tutorials. Joe Fedewa has been writing about technology for over a decade. The app we'll be using is called " Lockscreen Widgets and Drawer," and it costs $1.49. Keep in mind that this is a bit of a hacky method, so it may not work perfectly. Since Android doesn't officially support lock screen widgets, we'll need the help of a third-party app. However, the feature was removed two versions later with Android 5.0 Lollipop. It was officially added way back in 2012 with Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. Well, not officially-but that doesn't have to stop us.Īndroid actually supported lock screen widgets long before the iPhone did. Android is known for being the highly customizable OS, but it doesn't have the same features.
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