Android has supported live wallpapers since Android 2.0 Eclair was released in 2009, but to date, the OS only lets you set a single live wallpaper for both the home screen and the lock screen. The OS lets users set a separate static wallpaper for the home screen and the lock screen, so why can’t you do the same for live wallpapers? Well, it seems the answer is “because it isn’t implemented yet”, but that could be changing in Android 14. Android 14 is preparing to support setting a separate live wallpaper on the lock screen. Here’s what we know.

While digging through the source code for Android 13 QPR2 that was released last week, we spotted several code changes that prepare for enabling an “independent lock screen live wallpaper” feature. One code change adds a new method to Android’s WallpaperManager class called setWallpaperComponentWithFlags(). System apps that hold the SET_WALLPAPER_COMPONENT permission, such as Android’s Live Wallpaper Picker app, can use this method to “set the live wallpaper [component] for the given screen(s)”, such as the home screen, lock screen, or both screens.

In another code change, Google added a method called isLockscreenLiveWallpaperEnabled() to WallpaperManager to check if the new independent lock screen live wallpaper feature is enabled. In Android 13, the new method “is just a stub method that always return[s] false”, while in Android 14, it “will return true if the new wallpaper logic is enabled, i.e. if the lockscreen wallpaper always uses a wallpaperService and not a static image.” WallpaperService refers to the API that apps use to implement a live wallpaper service, so when the “new wallpaper logic” is enabled, the lock screen will support showing live wallpapers that implement this standard API.

The “independent lock screen live wallpaper” feature is currently not available in the Android 14 Developer Preview. This is because SystemUI checks the value of config_independentLockscreenLiveWallpaper before enabling the new wallpaper logic. This config is currently disabled by default in AOSP and the public Android 14 previews, so the lock screen in current builds continues to support showing only static wallpapers. In addition, the Live Wallpaper Picker app needs to be updated to support the new API to set a live wallpaper for the lock screen, as currently it still sets the user-selected live wallpaper on both the home screen and lock screen.

When the aforementioned config value is overridden to return true using a runtime resource overlay (RRO) in Android 14 DP2, the Pixel’s “Wallpaper & style” app displays the option to set an independent live wallpaper on the lock screen, but it doesn’t work. Instead, the Live Wallpaper Picker sets the live wallpaper on both the home screen and lock screen.

It’s likely this feature is being added to accommodate new devices like the Pixel Tablet, which will double up as a Nest smart display, but it’s still a welcome change that many users have requested for years. Google is working to add a plethora of new customization features, some of which are Pixel exclusive (like the new emoji wallpaper), but this one thankfully is not. We’ll keep an eye out to see if this feature lands in a future Android 14 preview release, but there’s no guarantee it will be released — sometimes in-development features just never make the final cut.