Live Activities on Android? Android 15 is testing an iOS-like lock screen change

Widgets for Android offer quick access to application shortcuts or useful information directly from the home screen. Until the release of Android 5.0 nearly a decade ago, the Android operating system allowed you to add almost any widget to your lock screen. While some manufacturers like Samsung have kept the lock screen widget dream alive, Google hasn’t shown much interest in reviving the feature.

As we first reported earlier this year, Google is finally bringing back lock screen widget support in Android 15, though the feature may be limited to tablets. While Android 15 may not allow phones to add widgets to the lock screen in the same way that tablets can, the operating system may offer another way to do it. The method that Google can use should be familiar to anyone who uses an iPhone, as the approach seems to be quite similar to Live Activities on iOS.

Before I explain further, I need to state how Google plans to handle lock screen widgets for Android 15 tablets. The widgets will not appear directly on the tablet lock screen; instead, it appears in a separate space accessed by swiping in from the right edge. This article I wrote earlier goes into more detail about how lock screen widgets will work for tablets in Android 15 if you’re curious.

This approach wouldn’t really work on phones because they have much smaller screens. However, the approach that iOS has taken to bring widgets to the lock screen is quite elegant, so there would be nothing wrong with Google taking a similar approach. In fact, Google already has a great starting point for creating an overview feature.

At a Glance, in case you’re not familiar, is a widget-like element that exists on the home screen and lock screen of Pixel devices (Google also offers a stripped-down version of At a Glance to third-party OEMs, but few use it). The tabs you browse in At a Glance are built on the Smartspace API. Android widgets, on the other hand, are built on the RemoteViews API. Smartspace doesn’t currently support RemoteViews, but that’s something Google has been quietly working on behind the scenes. If Google were to, say, finish supporting RemoteViews in the Smartspace API, and then enable the display of raw widgets from third-party apps in At a Glance, then we’d effectively get third-party widgets showing up on the lock screen.

Of course, things aren’t as simple for Google as “just” including support for RemoteViews and then displaying any third-party widget. The company would have to ensure that all the included widgets scale to fit within the limited area given on the At a Glance lock screen. There would also be a need to ensure that third-party widgets don’t fall on the first glance and potentially the entire lock screen. Additionally, it would need to work with more OEMs to include At a Glance on their lock screens.

Another challenge Google would have to consider is where to place the redesigned At a Glance view. It currently appears below the date on the lock screen which is at the top. However, Google is experimenting with moving At a Glance to the bottom of the lock screen, a change that most reminds us of Live Activities in iOS.

We had to enable a few flags in Android 15 Beta 1.2 to get At a Glance to appear at the bottom, so we’re not sure if this is anything more than a test or if Google actually plans to move forward with moving it. To better showcase the relocated At a Glance, we’ve disabled the two shortcuts on the lock screen, as they can sometimes overlap. In addition, the lock screen is a bit busy with notifications in the middle and the At a Glance scrolling carousel at the bottom.

Because of this, we think there’s still some work to be done before At a Glance can be moved down, but it’s a promising step towards bringing lock screen widgets back to phones. We don’t know if or when these changes will come, but it’s possible that we won’t see this launch until the next major Android release after Android 15, ie. Android 16 in 2025.