Android Quick App: WidgetLocker Lockscreen

WidgetLocker Lockscreen is a lockscreen replacement that gives you much more freedom over not only how your lockscreen looks, but how it functions. The premise is simple: Open up the lockscreen to having widgets and shortcuts of your choosing, and give you the ability to make any slider a shortcut to any app or process. The result is a pretty cool experience that really tightens up the efficiency factor of your device.

When you open WidgetLocker for the first time, you're greeted by a very informative walkthrough, showing you not only how to change your lockscreen up, but also how to access menus, activate Tool Mode, and remove sliders. There's also a tidbit about the 5-second rule that's worth knowing about.

Customizing your lockscreen is a fairly straightforward affair. Everything functions just as it would on a normal homescreen, so you can either long-press or do the menu > add route to pull up the applicable menu. From there, you're given the options to add another slider, applications, shortcuts, or widgets. It's all the same as doing anything on a homescreen, so you'll be treading in familiar territory.

Where things get really cool is the Custom Slider menu. TeslaCoil has packed the slider menu full of different themes, ranging from the stock Android slider to iOS's, MIUI to MotoBlur. Once you've picked your skin of choice, you slide the slider to configure what exactly you want it to do. This is rather limitless as well, giving you the requisite unlock option, in addition to WidgetLocker specialty actions, application shortcuts, or launcher-specific shortcuts.

WidgetLocker also boasts a highly variable and detailed settings menu. From here you can alter everything from which buttons unlock the screen to what WidgetLocker-specific widgets you want to use. You can also customize the look and feel of everything and a whole host of other things. If there's something you want to control, there's probably a menu option for it.

WidgetLocker is $1.99 in the Market, but with it's successful revamp as version 2.0 not too long ago, the price is well worth it. Especially if you're the type who wants things your way (and let's be honest, who isn't?), this is a must-have app.

Pictures and download links are after the break.

Joshua Munoz