Toward the end of 2013, Google introduced the Nexus 5, the first phone to ship with Android 4.4 KitKat right out of the box. It was a fairly substantial update over Jellybean, with one feature in particular that I loved: lock screen album art. Android could take the album art or thumbnail of whatever media was actively playing on your device and use it as a wallpaper for your lock screen. Unfortunately, Google decided to remove the feature in Android 11. But Android 12 has made customization the focus of Android again, and with dynamic theming now the star of the show, this is the perfect time to bring lock screen album art back.

Left: KitKat lock screen. Middle: Android 10 lock screen. Right: Android 12 lock screen.

I didn't just love this feature for its looks — it also added easily accessible music controls to Android's lock screen for the first time. In the KitKat days, lock screens were quite different from what we're used to now, allowing you could control your music, add widgets, and unlock your phone. The following release — Android 5.0 Lollipop — removed widgets and added the notification access we know and love today.

When Android 10 was released, it was clear that the days of having artwork on the lock screen were numbered. Google decided to blur the album covers, and while it made the clock easier to read on light backgrounds, it didn't look nearly as good as it used to. So, when Google finally removed the feature from Android 11, it didn't come as much of a surprise, and it feels unlikely we'll ever see it return.

That's especially disappointing, as Android 12 and Material You present the perfect opportunity to bring lock screen album art back better than ever. Material You pulls colors from your wallpaper and uses them to theme your phone, coating everything from the system UI and keyboard down to supported apps and icons in a colorful new hue. It's not hard to imagine your notifications, clock, and weather information on the lock screen changing color alongside every song to match the album art. Not only would you get a new look for your phone every time the display turns on, but it would bring Android and your music library closer than ever. It would also open up a world of customization ideas and possibilities, far from the limitations of basic wallpapers.

As fun as it is to think about, it's unlikely we'll ever see it happen. Even on new flagships like the Galaxy S22 and Pixel 6, generating a Material You theme from a new wallpaper takes a few seconds to generate. As such, it doesn't feel built to theme your phone on the fly, something an ever-rotating lineup of songs would require. It would also de-sync your lock screen experience with the rest of the phone, which could drive some users absolutely crazy. Perhaps one day Google will make its dynamic theming system fast enough for this to be feasible, but even if that were to happen, I doubt the company cares about this feature enough for it to return. After all, it already killed off full-screen album art — what's the point in bringing it back now?

While it's unlikely Google will ever reverse those decisions, it's fun to look back on them and imagine how they could look if they'd been kept around. Who knows — maybe in the future, we'll get our chance to see a much more powerful version of Material You capable of using our favorite songs and podcasts to deck out our devices.