Android 16 May Blur Your Lock Screen Wallpaper For A New ‘ambient AOD’ Look
Ryan Haines / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google is developing a new ‘ambient AOD’ feature for Android, which will display a blurred version of the lock screen wallpaper on the always-on display.
- This feature, showcased briefly by Google during The Android Show: I/O Edition, is an evolution of previous AOD wallpaper support and aims to show the entire wallpaper.
- Currently buggy and causing screen flickering on test devices like the Pixel 8 Pro, its successful implementation may depend on specific display capabilities, potentially limiting it to future devices like the Pixel 10 series and arriving in an Android 16 quarterly release.
One of the most notable aspects of Google’s new Material 3 Expressive design is its generous use of background blur. The Material 3 Expressive redesign in Android adds background blur to the notification and Quick Settings panels, the recents menu, and the app drawer. Soon, Google may also blur the lock screen wallpaper to show it on the always-on display; this feature could arrive in an upcoming quarterly release of Android 16.
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Displaying the lock screen wallpaper on the always-on display isn’t actually new to Android phones, let alone Pixel devices. In fact, Google introduced AOD wallpaper support back in 2018 with Android 9 Pie and briefly implemented it on the Pixel 3 series before removing it from future models. Over the past few months, the company has been developing a new AOD wallpaper implementation that shows the entire wallpaper on the AOD, rather than just a portion.
This new AOD wallpaper implementation is called ‘ambient AOD.’ Google briefly showcased it during The Android Show: I/O Edition last week. Although the company didn’t explicitly mention the feature during the event, one of the shared videos clearly displays a blurred version of the lock screen wallpaper on the AOD.
Following the event, we managed to get an early version of this ‘ambient AOD’ feature working on our Pixel 8 Pro, and it functions as expected. Here’s a gallery showing four different sets of lock screen wallpapers and their corresponding ambient AOD counterparts:
What you can’t see from these images is that the feature is currently quite buggy on the Pixel 8 Pro. When ‘ambient AOD’ is enabled, the screen periodically flickers. This flickering might occur because the Pixel 8 Pro’s screen isn’t capable of supporting this feature. An internal code change related to the ambient AOD feature states that it “will only be supported by particular displays,” which could exclude current Pixel devices. If that’s the case, then it’s possible the ambient AOD feature will only be available on upcoming devices, such as the Google Pixel 10 series.
Since the ambient AOD feature is still in development, the exact display characteristics required for it to function correctly remain unknown. Android phones, including Pixel devices, utilize a special low-power display state when AOD is active. It’s possible that certain aspects of this state, such as refresh rate or color reproduction capabilities, might prevent the ‘ambient AOD’ feature from working on current devices. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait long to learn more, as we anticipate this ‘ambient AOD’ feature will launch in an Android 16 Quarterly Platform Release (QPR).
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