Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 starts work on a long-overdue Quick Settings upgrade

When Google delivered Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5 late yesterday afternoon, the release initially looked like it mostly focused on a whole lot of bug fixes. But as we spend a little more time with the code, we’re noticing more and more functional additions. Right now we’re checking out one that almost seems a little crazy that we haven’t had all along, as Android gets ready to let users lock Quick Settings tiles.

Right now, Android provides a fair amount of access to Quick Settings tiles, even from a locked device. While there are obviously some sensible precautions in place, forcing you to unlock your phone to use Wallet or Quick Share, for instance, other tiles let you instantly toggle them on or off with no additional authentication.

But what if you don’t want someone picking up your phone and turning off Bluetooth, or killing your hotspot? So far, Quick Settings haven’t offered any protection against unauthorized access here. But in Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5, we’re spotting new text strings in the code that sure hint that Google is working to change that:

As you can see, when this option is active, Quick Settings won’t be accessible on locked devices — with the sole exception of  being able to use the flashlight. That feels like a largely reasonable exemption, although we suppose there could be situations where a bad actor was tying to drain a locked phone’s battery as quickly as possible for some nefarious purpose.

Still, it sounds a whole lot better than the situation we have now, and we can’t wait to finally check this out in action. Right now, we’re not able to get any of this functional, and we’re just inferring its operation from the descriptions in those text strings. Presumably when this goes live, we’ll find the toggle for this option somewhere with your lockscreen settings, but that’s not yet certain.

We’ll be keeping an eye on future Android 17 Beta builds in the hopes of spotting when this is ready for a test.