After years of neglect, Google is finally bringing some widget goodness back to the Android lock screen interface, and it’s doing it Jelly Bean style.
Google has officially released the latest version of its flagship mobile operating system — Android 16 Quarterly Platform Release 2 (QPR2) — onto compatible Pixel handsets, while also submitting its source code to the Android Open Source Project (AOSP). When compared to Android’s last major software update, which introduced a Material 3 Expressive design language overhaul, QPR2 is comparatively less flashy, though it’s still filled with a smattering of smaller software tweaks and platform enhancements.
Among other things, Android 16 QPR2 introduces an expanded dark mode, custom app icon shapes, a notification summarizing tool, enhanced HDR brightness controls, forced icon color theming, time zone change notifications, a 90:10 split screen multitasking mode, a toggle to reduce system blur effects, support for graphical desktop Linux apps, and, last but not least, lock screen widgets.
If that final new feature sounds strangely familiar, that’s because it is: lock screen widgets on Android have a storied history, and, while new in one sense of the word, they’re also equally an already-established part of the Android ecosystem at large, and one that Google itself is certainly no stranger to.
Android 4.2 Jelly Bean lives on in the modern era
Google has done a 360 on the lock screen widget concept
While ‘stock’ builds of contemporary Android are comparatively late to the party when it comes to supporting lock screen widgets at the system level, the irony is that Google was previously at the forefront of the lock screen applet scene an entire decade ago.
Google first developed and released lock screen widgets as part of its Android 4.2 Jelly Bean release in 2012.
