‘Glance’ brings its feature-heavy Android lockscreen to the US, already on these devices

Ben Schoon | Apr 23 2024 - 9:08 pm PT

The Android lockscreen is very simple, but that depends on what phone you have, and where you buy it. In some regions, “Glance” has become commonplace as a supercharged Android lockscreen with recommendations, information, and ads. Now, that’s coming to the US.

Glance is a company that’s primarily popular across India, Asia, and other regions. It allows Android manufacturers to add content the lockscreen through a personalized interface that can show news, sports scores, recommended content, and even play instant games before a full download.

One big idea behind Glance seems to be to capture those times where the user pulls out their smartphone by habit. In a previous email to 9to5Google, the company mentioned that studies found that over half of the time people pull out their phone, they don’t know what they intend to do. Glance then mentioned that a personalized lockscreen can “deliver meaningful content.”

Back in 2022 it was reported that US carriers wanted to start using Glance on Android phones sold in the States, but that never materialized. Now, though, it’s being reported by TechCrunch that Glance has a deal with Verizon and Motorola to use this special Android lockscreen with a “full launch” later on in 2024.

The report brings out that, despite Glance delivering ads on its experience in other countries, the company’s US “pilot” won’t include ads on the Android lockscreen, or at least it “doesn’t plan” to do so.

While Glance hasn’t made a formal announcement, this is already underway. In a review, Android Authority notes that Glance is pre-installed on the 2024 version of the Moto G Play sold in the US, saying that the experience delivered irrelevant articles, but there was no mention of direct ads. Digital Trends also confirmed it’s in place on the Moto G Power (2024), as pictured below.

According to the report, Glance does not collect data from its users for the sake of personalization but is exploring using AI with Qualcomm to improve its content recommendations and move processing to the device.

Like many “bloatware” apps, Glance can be disabled, though it’s unclear if it can be removed entirely. The review mentioned earlier only notes that you can “opt out” of Glance, not that you can uninstall it.

Glance hasn’t announced plans to bring ads to its lockscreen experience in the US for the time being, but that future seems inevitable given how the product is used in other regions.