Microsoft Releases Live Lock Screen Beta for Windows Phone 8.1 Users

Following on his tweet promising the feature on July 18, Joe Belfiore on Friday announced the availability of the Live Lock Screen Beta app for Windows Phone 8.1, which at this point just allows for a total of 6 new lock screen layouts.

Belfiore via tweet directed users to the Windows Phone Store listing of the Live Lock Screen Beta app, which lists the app as a 4MB download. The beta version of the app features six new lock screen themes, letting users personalise their lock screens with new layouts for time, date, and notifications.


Each Live Lock Screen theme has its own unique unlock animation. The listing adds that users can swipe through multiple background images of their choosing for the Live Lock Screen, or choose the day's latest background images from Bing.

Notably, the minimum memory requirement for the app has been dropped from the 1GB that was announced previously to 512MB, good news for the significant numbers of low-cost Windows Phone device users.

Microsoft had first introduced the new Lock Screen at its Build conference in April, alongside Windows Phone 8.1.

The company had then described the new Lock Screen for Windows Phone 8.1 as multiple themes featuring different visuals and animations, and said APIs were also available for developers to create their own themes and widgets.

We'll have to wait to see if Microsoft introduces something other than just more themes once it brings the Live Lock Screen app out of beta. The implementations of third-party lock screen themes and widgets are yet to make their way out yet.