Microsoft drops hint of more MS Launcher updates

Jun 7, 2019 04:45 GMT  ·  By

Microsoft Launcher for Android could soon get lock screen customization options, according to a hint dropped by Microsoft itself on the UserVoice feedback platform.

A post requesting “lockscreen personalization” has been marked as completed by Microsoft, and as per German site DrWindows, this is in most of the cases living proof that the software giant completed development of the feature and gets ready to include it in stable releases.

“Changing content on the lockscreen would be amazing. Moving the clock to the bottom, making it bigger/smaller/ digital/analog? No problem, just do it!” the feature request posted in September 2018 reads. Microsoft marked the request as completed on May 14.

While Microsoft has remained completely tight-lipped on such improvements for Microsoft Launcher, bringing lock screen customization to its Android launcher isn’t necessarily a difficult thing to do.

Enter Next Lock Screen

And this is mostly because the Redmond-based tech giant has already released a lock screen customization app called Next Lock Screen, so there’s a chance that this project could be resurrected and integrated into Microsoft Launcher.

Next Lock Screen allows users to customize their lock screens with a custom unlock method, more notification options, and a personalized app launcher. Furthermore, Next Lock Screen allowed the creation of shortcuts for phone features like flashlight, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and more, while also integrating a wallpaper changer and a weather widget with automatic updates.

While this lock screen customization app has been more or less abandoned, some of its features would fit Microsoft Launcher like a glove, especially because they’re already available on the lock screen. MS Launcher, for instance, already comes with a weather widget and calendar support, a built-in wallpaper changer based on the Bing wallpaper of the day and more.

It remains to be seen if lock screen customization is indeed something that makes its way to the stable version of the Microsoft Launcher, but all signs seem to be suggesting this is very likely to happen. The next major beta update could bring further evidence in this regard.