Android 11 brought several quite useful smart home functions to the power button menu, last year’s upgrade removed them entirely. While the toggles for your lights, cameras, and other devices were still accessible via a new lock screen shortcut, you had to unlock your handset to do anything, making the experience cumbersome and clumsy. Thankfully, a major modification in today’s Android 13 Beta 1 release pave the way for some significant improvements — albeit with some caveats.
Android 13 allows you to Control Your Phone from Lock Screen
You can now operate any of your smart home devices without having to unlock your phone or tablet thanks to a new toggle in the lock screen settings menu. You won’t need to enter a PIN or use your fingerprint to turn on a light once this toggle is enabled. Instead, everything will be immediately available.
Because this feature is currently disabled by default, users will need to opt in to avoid security problems. It must also be supported by the device control software itself, such as Google Home. Right now, it doesn’t appear like any app supports it, and I still have to authenticate myself before I can operate any of my devices. By the time Android 13 launches later this year, things should be a lot different. There are still a lot to discover about the new features in today’s Android 13 update, but if you want to give it a shot, downloading it to your Pixel phone is a breeze.
Adding and editing controls, predictably, prompts you to enter your PIN or password, ensuring that no one can entirely change your smart home configuration from the lock screen. Individual lights operate well, but that’s it for now – groups, outlets, smart speakers, and other features all require you to unlock your phone. We’ll have to wait and see if this feature is expanded in the final version of Android 13. After all, it’s still early in the development cycle, and tweaks to the lock screen controls as well as Google Home could improve the experience. For now, if you’re using this week’s beta, make sure you update your Home app — or download the newest APK from APK Mirror — to give it a try.
