Android 14’s lock screen customizations are live in Beta 3

Android 14 Beta 3 arrived yesterday, bringing the beta to the ‘Platform Stability’ stage, where all that’s left is ironing out all the bugs and issues before the final release. It also means we can get a look at some of the finalized features ahead of Android 14’s launch — for example, the new lock screen customizations.

Android 14’s lock screen customizations are now live and accessible in Beta 3. If you’re running the beta on your Pixel, you can find the new customization options in the ‘Wallpaper & style’ menu (long-press on an empty part of the home screen or find it in the Settings menu). When you open Wallpaper & style in Android 14, you’ll see a familiar interface with options to select from five recent wallpaper options or look through more wallpapers, pick different Material You colour themes, and more. There’s now a toggle to switch from home screen to lock screen.

Lock screen options in Wallpaper & style on Android 14 Beta 3.

On the lock screen tab, you can pick from a variety of new clock styles by swiping left and right on the screen. Most of the clocks are digital with different font styles, but there is one analog option. The clock you pick also changes the always-on display clock to match. Unfortunately, the customization options don’t quite as deep as what’s available in iOS 16 — for example, there are no lock screen widget options.

There’s also a button to access clock colour and size options. Clock colours can be either the same as the Material You theme pulled from your wallpaper or one of several static options that don’t change with your wallpaper. When you select a colour, you can adjust the brightness with a slider.

You can change the size and colour of the lock screen clock.

As for size, there are only two options — dynamic, which adjusts clock size based on lock screen content, or small. It’s not clear if there will be more options included with the full Android 14 release.

Back on the lock screen page, you still have access to Material You theme pallets and wallpapers (you can pick different wallpapers for the home screen and lock screen). Below that is an option to customize your lock screen shortcuts. You can pick shortcuts for the bottom left and/or right corner, with options including:

• No shortcut
• Mute
• QR code scanner
• Do Not Disturb
• Camera
• Video capture
• Wallet
• Flashlight
• Home

Android 14 Beta 3 lets you pick different lock screen shortcuts.

It’s worth noting that the changes take effect right away with no need to tap a ‘Save’ or ‘Apply’ button. The upside to this is you can click the power button to go straight to the lock screen and see how the changes look, though in my experience, it’s better to close Wallpaper & style first to avoid bugs. For example, when I was tweaking the lock screen shortcuts, I went to the lock screen to test out what one of the shortcuts did and when I went back to Wallpaper & style several shortcut options were missing until I closed and re-opened the menu.

Overall, that seems like all the changes that are live so far. It’s possible we could see more clock options come with the final release, but I suspect this will be it. It’s not clear if people will be able to download third-party clock options too — if not, that would be an awesome feature for Google to add in the future. Notably, the emoji and cinematic wallpapers Google teased at I/O are not present yet. The AI-generated wallpapers aren’t either, though Google already said those wouldn’t arrive until the fall.