Credit: Rita El Khoury / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Although missing from the stable Android 17 launch and recent Canary builds, code in Android 17 QPR1 Beta 6 proves Google is still actively developing native App Lock for Pixels.
- Newly discovered strings in the latest QPR beta reveal that users will be able to lock multiple apps at once directly via Settings, moving away from the tedious one-by-one setup via the Pixel Launcher seen in the Canary build.
- Google is also working on a feature that lets users restrict app access to biometrics, disabling the PIN-unlock fallback option.
Android 17 stable was released last month with a whole bunch of new features, but it was curiously missing one key feature: App Lock. Pixel users have been waiting patiently for a native app lock solution to arrive, and while Android Canary 2603 surfaced the feature, later Canary releases curiously removed support for it. Thankfully, the feature doesn’t seem to have been axed (so far), as we’ve spotted Google continuing to work on it behind the scenes.
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