Launch any app from your iPhone Lock Screen with Lock Launcher

This lock screen launcher for iPhone supports your apps and websites, Apple’s Shortcuts app, custom URL schemes, Dynamic Island, live activities and more.

Lock Launcher, a versatile lock screen widget

Teaser image from the Lock Launcher iPhone app

With iOS 16, you can personalize your lock screen with, among other things, widgets below the clock. You can have up to four small widgets, two mid-size ones or one large widget.

Read: How to change the notification style on the iPhone’s lock screen

Widgets in iOS 16 are cool but their full potential isn’t yet fully realized because of various limitations in terms of what they can do. To begin with, widgets act as shortcuts to their apps. You can’t interact with them to do things like marking an email message as read without opening the underlying app.

You can overcome some of those limitations with Lock Launcher.

A widget for your lock screen widgets

Created by developer ZiLi Huang, this app lets you launch pretty much anything from the lock screen, including apps without a widget and your favorite websites.

The utility doesn’t stop there because Lock Launcher supports running your automation scripts in the Shortcuts app. Maybe you’re a fan of our shortcut for setting your lock and home screen wallpaper using Unsplash images. With Lock Launcher, you can add any shortcut to an app’s widget and run it with one touch.

A Dock on your iPhone’s lock screen

Screenshots of the Lock Launcher app, showcasing versatile lock screen widgets, Dynamic Island launcher and other features

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could have a Dock on the lock screen? Lock Launcher supports Apple’s Live Activities feature that puts snippets of real-time information like sports scores or delivery times at the bottom of the screen.

Turn on the live activities feature in the Lock Launcher settings so you can put app shortcuts in the live activities area at the bottom of the screen. Kinda like having a Dock on the lock screen. In fact, you can put an app launcher in the Dynamic Island!

There are some limitations with that because iOS 16.1 permits live activities to be kept for a maximum of 12 hours (8 hours in the Dynamic Island), but they’re working on an auto-renewal feature to circumvent that.

You can also put the app’s clock or battery widget in the Dynamic Island and turn on Pure Mode to take screenshots without the Dynamic Island showing up. Other features include custom icons, support for URL schemes and so on.

Pricing and availability

Lock Launcher is free to download [App Store link] with the option to remove limitations and unlock all of the features with a one-time $0.99 payment.

For further information, visit the official website at locklauncher.com.