Music and the Lollipop Lock Screen
After the battery started giving me trouble in my THL T6 Pro, I broke down and bought a slightly more upscale smartphone – an ASUS Zenfone 2. Both phones are about the same height and width, though the ASUS seems to be a bit thicker. One of the main differences in the phones is that the THL used KitKat (Android v. 4.4.x) and the ASUS uses Lollipop (Android v. 5.x). Anytime I get a new piece of technology, it takes awhile to figure it out and get it to work the way I want it to. I don’t plan on everything working right out-of-the-box.
Because it’s a good security practice, and because my employer requires it, I always set my mobile devices to require a PIN or password at the lock screen. This isn’t much of an issue, unless I’m listening to music. When I’m walking to or from work, I like to listen to music. The music app is set to shuffle, but it sometimes lands on a song that I don’t feel like listening to. With Android KitKat, I was able to go to the lock screen and fast-forward to another song, but I wasn’t to do this in Android Lollipop. Trying to figure it out, it looks like I’m not the only one with this problem.
Although I tried some of the online suggestions, they didn’t work for me. All of the suggestions I read had the same instructions: go to Settings -> Sound & Notification -> When device is locked -> Show all notification content. I did this but my lock screen was still only showing the time, the temp, and the number pad for the PIN.
To fix it, after doing the step above, I went into Settings -> Lock screen -> Skip the slide page -> Off. The Slide page is where the music widget shows up. Try it out.
Go to Music and start a song, then press the power button on the device to turn the screen off. Press the power button again to get the lock screen. Your song should still be playing, and you should be see the music widget, plus whatever other notifications you have enabled. If you want to unlock the device, you can swipe up from the bottom.