How to use Android 16’s new lock screen widgets on your Pixel phone

Google’s Android 16 QPR2 update is here, and it’s a pretty impressive one. This latest quarterly platform release comes with several user-facing changes, and one of the biggest among them is lock screen widgets.

The Pixel Tablet was the first Pixel device to get lock screen widgets in September 2024, but until now, lock screen widgets haven’t been available on Pixel phones. That finally changes with Android 16 QPR2.

After downloading Android 16 QPR2, you can’t immediately start adding lock screen widgets to your phone. You first need to enable the feature in the Settings app, and thankfully, doing so is pretty simple.

1. Open the Settings app on your phone.
2. Tap Display & touch.
3. Tap Lock screen.
4. Tap the toggle next to Widgets on lock screen.

You won’t get a pop-up or any other type of confirmation letting you know lock screen widgets are enabled, but so long as the toggle now shows a checkmark instead of an X, you’re good to go.

Now, the next time you visit your lock screen, you can swipe left to view your widgets page. Google adds a few for you by default, including widgets for Gemini, Pixel Weather, and the Google Finance Watchlist.

You can press and hold a widget to enter edit mode, where you can resize widgets, remove existing ones, add new ones, and rearrange your widget placement. You can use any existing Android widgets on the lock screen, so you have a wide range to choose from.

The whole interface works pretty well, but there are a couple of things you should know. If you’re in edit mode but don’t see an option to add more widgets, tap on whatever widget is currently selected. When you do this, the button in the top-left corner will change from Remove to Add widget.

You can also have multiple pages of widgets and swipe left/right to navigate through them. Unfortunately, the swipe gesture is very touchy, so if you have three or more widget pages, you may accidentally swipe through more than you intend to.

You can have up to three widgets per page using the standard size. Most widgets can be extended to occupy two slots, while some can be stretched to fill an entire page. I wish lock screen widgets supported smaller sizes for maximum information density per page, but that’s something Google should be able to easily fix in a future update.

And that’s basically all you need to know! While lock screen widgets aren’t perfect in their current form, it’s still really nice to finally have them on Pixel phones.

Do you plan on using lock screen widgets on your Pixel?