Samsung One UI 7 will launch compact live app widgets

In the past few years, Samsung has revamped the lock screen with numerous customization features and the One UI 7 launch will make it more interactive with compact live app widgets.

Live apps run in the background, unlike all apps, these have interactive elements. Therefore, the system doesn’t kill or limit their features when you push them in the background.

For example, in the Media Player app, when you start a song and lock your device, the song keeps on playing. When you wake the device, the lock screen will show you media controls. In that way, you don’t need to unlock the device to play/pause or change the track.

Such widgets are available in the existing One UI version, which makes it quite convenient. However, Samsung has planned a new upgrade for this section to make these lock screen widgets compact and intuitive.

Compact Live App Activities

Samsung One UI 7 is still far away from launch but an early leak from AndroidHeadlines has some new information, especially for the lock screen. A few seconds clip has uncovered a tiny detail on the bottom side of the display.

The lock screen has new compact widgets in between the phone and camera shortcuts. These widgets have buttons. The background has round corners to reflect One UI 7’s user interface and the leak showed three widgets:

• Music – Has a thumbnail on the left and back, pause/play, and next buttons.
• Recorder – Contains a recording timer and a stop button.
• Clock – This widget shows an active timer, total time, and ETA clock time along with a pause/resume button.

Samsung One UI 7 Compact Stackable Live App Widgets (Source – Androidheadlines)

Stackable

In One UI 6 and before, the lock screen will show you large widgets stretching from left to right and in a list view. In the most recent version, you will only see app icons. Once tapped, the system will expand the notification panel to show you the live activity or message notifications.

One UI 7 appears to have a new solution for this scenario. Instead of relying only on icons, the system could now separate live activities from other static app notifications.

With this hybrid approach, the system will show you the compact widgets at the bottom and If you have different live apps running simultaneously, the lock screen will stack them just like photos and you can swipe them to see the other live app activities.

Meanwhile, you can still tap on the notification icons to expand the large widget and use it as usual.

Comparison with iOS

Apple also has live activities and these look identical to what Samsung has to offer with the existing One UI version. When a user starts a timer, it appears right on the lock screen with a few controls.

However, compact live app widgets are likely to surpass that experience with Samsung One UI 7.

One UI 7 Launch Date

The Korean tech giant is planning to launch the One UI 7 beta program for public testers and it’s officially expected to debut with the Samsung Galaxy S25 series in Early 2025. Read more about One UI 7 here.