In the days of Jelly Bean, Android supported lock screen widgets. They weren’t the most revolutionary of things, but thanks to app developers, we did get some pretty sweet weather app and clock widgets onto the lock screen for our glancing needs. It was good times, but as we’ve advanced and gotten deeper into Always On displays, lock screen widgets have gone away.
Does anyone miss them?
Google Now widget? Yes, please!
What didn’t help with the adoption of these widgets were OEMs like Samsung, apparently not fans of having what could be sensitive information shared on a phone’s lock screen. Out of the box, on the Galaxy S4 for example, these widgets were disabled but could be applied with a few clicks inside of the settings menu. We actually did a whole video on it. They also disabled lock screen widgets whenever you had a PIN or Pattern set to unlock your device. What a pain!
Back in 2013, Kellen wrote a lengthy love letter to lock screen widgets. He was a big time fan, as it allowed him to quickly access functions like Google’s song recognition and DashClock. I haven’t heard him talk about them since, so he can’t be too saddened by their departure.
What say you, would you mind having lock screen widgets return or are they better left back in the Nexus 4 days?