Launch Apps from your Lock Screen with Lock Launcher
For years you’ve been able to open the camera or turn on the flashlight from your Lock Screen. Now, with iOS 16.1 and Live Activities you can now open up any app you like from the Lock Screen, with the help of a clever little app called Lock Launcher. Here’s a quick guide to how it all works…
You can download Lock Launcher here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/lock-launcher/id1636719674
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For years and years and years you’ve been able to open the Camera and turn on the Flashlight on your Lock Screen, but that’s been it.
Well, with Live Activities in iOS 16.1 and some clever apps like the one I’m going to show you today you can now set your own app shortcuts to run straight from your Lock Screen.
The app that I’m going to use is called Lock Launcher, and I’m doing all of this with the free version.
Now there are other apps that do similar things, this is just the one I’m demoing today.
When you open up the app it will show you a list of favourite apps and shortcuts.
It’s got two there by default, but I can add some more favourites or I can remove the ones that are there at the moment.
So I’m going to add a new favourite, and from here we’re going to choose to Add An Action.
That action is going to be to open an app (in this case the Facebook app) from the list of hot apps.
I can scroll down until I find Facebook and then if I wanted to I could even change the name of the app.
I’ll keep it as it is, and I’ll add that to my favourites.
We’ll do that one more time and add a fourth shortcut – this time for Starbucks.
I’ve just chosen four here as an example, but let me know in the comments down below what apps you’ll put on your Lock Screen after watching this tutorial.
Then I’m going to press the Island button in the top right hand corner.
Even if you haven’t got an iPhone 14 Pro with a Dynamic Island this will still work as a Live Activity on your Lock Screen, but you still go to the same button and then make sure Live Activities are turned on.
You can have up to eight app icons on your Lock Screen, I’m going to stick with just my four favourite ones for now, and you can change the shape of the icons as well.
I’m going to turn the round corners all the way up to 10 and that will make my shortcuts circles on the Lock Screen, just like the camera and flashlight buttons.
When I press Done in the corner and then lock my iPhone I now have those four circular icons on my Lock Screen, right above the Camera!
Tapping on one of these will very quickly bounce you back into the Launcher app and then it’ll bounce you straight out to the app you’ve chosen – so in this case it’s gone straight into Facebook.
And if you do have an iPhone 14 Pro and you go back to your Home Screen you can press the Dynamic Island and those shortcuts will be there for you there as well.
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1 thought on “Launch Apps from your Lock Screen with Lock Launcher”
When I click on an icon, a pop up window tells me Lock Launcher wants to open that app. I have to click on OK in order to have the app actually opening. How to skip this step every time?