Your custom Android clock could soon show on the notification panel

Your Android clock customizations could soon extend beyond your lock screen. Mishaal Rahman from Android Authority found the feature in the code of the latest Android 16 Beta, and while it’s not yet live, he was able to get the feature working long enough for a demonstration.

The first change you’ll notice is that the Quick Settings and Notifications panels have been split. Swiping from the right brings up Quick Settings, while swiping down from the left shows Notifications. There are also several different options for how to swap between one or the other, including tapping the icons at each corner of the screen.

There’s another perk to this, though. It opens up more space in the Notifications panel, and that means your customizations can transfer over. Rahman points out that the appearance could change, however. His activation might not be what the official version looks like.

Further tests demonstrated that the Notifications panel shows the same clock as the lock screen, along with any thematic changes you choose to make. Not everything results in a clear one-to-one transfer; while most of the clocks appear properly, Rahman said the weather clock doesn’t show in full.

Please enable Javascript to view this content

It’s an exciting change and one that furthers the customization options in Android 16. That said, it probably won’t be available in the next update. Since the feature is linked to the separate dual panels — and that feature isn’t ready yet — it probably won’t be included until later. However, Google could easily add it to one of the Android 16 quarterly updates.

One of the main draws for Android users is how much more customizable these phones are compared to other platforms (especially iOS), and updates like this draw in new customers who want more granular control over their devices. And when you consider how many other useful features are coming with Android 16, it looks like it’s poised to take the lead over iOS 18.