\n
Your phone\u2019s lock screen is the hottest new real estate in tech. Apple made the iPhone\u2019s lock screen a centerpiece of iOS 16<\/a>, giving users more control over how theirs looks and works. But while Apple talked about pretty clock fonts and nifty color-matched wallpapers, it also showed off a world in which your lock screen is more than just a security measure; it\u2019s becoming another surface on which companies can put information, apps, and even ads. Apple\u2019s far from the only company thinking about this, too. TechCrunch<\/em> reports that Glance<\/a>, a lock screen content company (which apparently is a thing!), is already in talks with US carriers and plans to launch on some Android phones in the US in the next two months. <\/p>\n
The competition for your eyeballs and attention has already come out of apps and onto your homescreen through widgets and notifications. Now, it looks like it\u2019s headed one step further: onto the first thing you see when you turn on your phone before you even pick it up or unlock it. That might be at least one step too far.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019ve never seen a Glance-running device before, one way to imagine the app is sort of like a Snapchat Discover feed on your phone\u2019s lock screen. The company serves up a rotating set of news headlines, videos, quizzes, games, and photos that appear every time your phone screen turns on. Glance calls these content cards \u201cglances,\u201d naturally, and says that users consume these glances 65 times a day on average<\/a>. <\/p>\n
\n  <\/p>\n    <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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    <\/span><\/p>\n
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    Glance is a never-ending content machine on your lock screen.<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: Glance<\/cite><\/p>\n    <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
And, of course, it\u2019s all filled with ads. Glance is a subsidiary of InMobi Group, an Indian ad tech company. It has partnerships with a number of manufacturers, including Samsung and Xiaomi, and the company says its software is built into more than 400 million phones around Asia. Google is an investor in the company \u2014 and so is Peter Thiel.<\/p>\nIn a certain light, Glance or something like it is a totally sensible idea. You don\u2019t need to constantly dip in and out of apps looking for news and information \u2014 you don\u2019t even need to unlock your phone. You just trust your device to bring you something interesting every time you turn it on. And a couple of non-intrusive ads won\u2019t hurt, right? After all, I bought the Kindle with ads on the lock screen to save a few bucks, and it doesn\u2019t bother me. (Though I never would have bought the Prime Exclusive phones that came with lock screen ads<\/a>, and apparently neither would anyone else<\/a>.)<\/p>\n
\nYour lock screen could help you use your phone less \u2014 or it could be a new source of distraction<\/q><\/aside>\n<\/div>\nApple has echoed this idea, talking about how it sees a more feature-rich lock screen as a way to help you use your phone less<\/em>. Apple\u2019s software chief Craig Federighi referred to the lock screen<\/a> as \u201cthe face of your phone\u201d and said that features like Live Activities could make it easier to get quick information without having to unlock your phone and open yourself up to all the distractions inside. \u201cIf you can get the answer at a glance, then you don\u2019t unlock,\u201d he said, \u201cand once you\u2019ve unlocked your phone, you almost forget why you\u2019re there in the first place!\u201d<\/p>\n
\n  <\/p>\n    <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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    Letting you customize your lock screen is a good idea!<\/em><\/figcaption>Image: Apple<\/cite><\/p>\n    <\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n
But, by opening up this space, these companies are offering apps and advertisers a chance to get even closer to you. Developers will surely build Live Activities that stick around long after they\u2019re done being useful \u2014 the better to grab you every time your phone lights up. Platforms will find ways to pull more of their content onto lock screens, attempting to hook you into the feed before you even press a button. <\/p>\nGenerally speaking, most users don\u2019t change their settings, and you better believe developers will use that to their advantage. \u201cConsumers will move from seeking content to consuming what is shown to them,\u201d InMobi CEO Naveen Tewari told Forbes<\/em><\/a> when Glance launched. That\u2019s super bleak and<\/em> probably true!<\/p>\n
Most of all, a Glance-like future is a way of turning smartphones even further into consumption-only devices. And is \u201ceasier access to endless feeds of medium-interesting content\u201d really a worthwhile goal? As we look to reset our relationship with technology, I would argue we should be finding places to add <\/em>friction, to give you what you need when you look at your phone… but to also help you realize you didn\u2019t need to look at your phone at all. And if, as Federighi said, the lock screen\u2019s job is to help you avoid distraction, I can\u2019t imagine a worse idea than putting a TikTok-style video feed between you and your homescreen.<\/p>\n
\n<\/iframe><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p id=\"V67fnn\">Glance will surely have competition, but it\u2019s already a good example of where this is all headed. In June, it held <a href=\"https:\/\/glance.com\/newsroom\/pressrelease\/glance-live-fest-launch\">Glance Live Fest<\/a>, a virtual three-day festival that took place entirely on users\u2019 lock screens. It streamed concerts and interactive challenges, live tutorials and interviews, and a ton of live shopping content to more than 70 million users. It\u2019s like an opt-out music festival, to which you\u2019re transported every time someone sends you a text. That sounds distracting, frustrating, and just flat-out exhausting.<\/p>\n<p id=\"IQWNdR\">There\u2019s no question that our lock screens could be better. The whole \u201crunning list of notifications\u201d thing isn\u2019t great, and a push for more personalization will make a lot of users happy. But that space should belong to users and users only, not turn into yet another breeding ground for distraction and advertising. We should be taking back control of our phones \u2014 not giving more of it away.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><code><br \/><\/br><\/code><\/p>\n<p>Source: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/7\/5\/23195827\/lockscreen-content-apple-ios-16-glance\">https:\/\/www.theverge.com\/2022\/7\/5\/23195827\/lockscreen-content-apple-ios-16-glance<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Your phone\u2019s lock screen is the hottest new real estate in tech. Apple made the iPhone\u2019s lock screen a centerpiece of iOS 16, giving users more control over how theirs looks and works. But while Apple talked about pretty clock fonts and nifty color-matched wallpapers, it also showed off a world in which your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9308,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,8],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-9307","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-apple","category-technology","tag-apple"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Apps and advertisers are coming for your lock screen, and it\u2019s going to be exhausting - Science and Nerds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceandnerds.com\/2022\/07\/06\/apps-and-advertisers-are-coming-for-your-lock-screen-and-its-going-to-be-exhausting\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Apps and advertisers are coming for your lock screen, and it\u2019s going to be exhausting - Science and Nerds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Source: Your phone\u2019s lock screen is the hottest new real estate in tech. Apple made the iPhone\u2019s lock screen a centerpiece of iOS 16, giving users more control over how theirs looks and works. 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