It seems that Android 15 will make it easier to control your smart home devices thanks to a new “Home Controls” screensaver. The feature will include shortcuts to useful controls that will speed up this task, since you will not have to unlock the phone to tweak parameters in your IoT products.
Mishaal Rahman found the “Home Controls” screensaver in the latest Android 15 Developer Preview 2. However, the feature is apparently in the early stages of development. This means that it is not visible by default, so you will have to enable it manually to test it. After enabling it, it will be available in the same section where you usually set a new screensaver.
This will be the new smart home controls screensaver for Android 15
If you set the smart home screensaver, it will show your favorite Google Home controls under the time. So, you can access these controls quickly and without complications. According to the report, the feature uses the same UI that appears when you set the Google Home app as Android’s Device Controls in Android 14. This could be to maintain familiarity and facilitate setup. However, we still cannot rule out a redesigned UI in the final version.
Although it uses a UI inherited from the Google Home app, the smart home controls screensaver is powered by the SystemUI app. So, it seems that it will be practically a partial integration of the Home app into the OS. That said, in its current state, the new feature only works with Google Home. This means that there is no support for other Device Controls providers. So, developers of other Device Controls apps will have to create their own configurable screensaver.
Lastly, the report indicates that the new feature will be compatible with all Android devices running Android 15. This is because the related code was implemented in the com.android.systemui path instead of com.google.android.systemui, so it will not be exclusive to Pixel products.
