For a long time now, Android displayed album art from the music you played on the lock screen. However, with Android 11, Google will remove that feature.
According to XDA Developers, Google confirmed in an Issue Tracker thread that Android 11 would stop showing art on the lock screen.
Previously, it appeared that the missing album art was tied to a bug as it only happened if users enabled face unlock. However, it seems the change will soon apply across Android 11.
Unfortunately, Google doesn’t offer much of a reason why it’s making the change. My guess is the move relates to Android 11’s refreshed media controls.
If you haven’t had a chance to play around with Android 11 yet, it ditches the old semi-permanent notification with music playback controls. Instead, there’s a new panel in the quick settings panel when users open the notification drawer with playback controls. Plus, it remembers controls for different apps. For example, if you listen to music on Spotify and pause it to open Google Podcasts and listen to a podcast, you can access controls for both by swiping the panel left and right.
Of course, these new controls don’t change much for the lock screen, which still shows a notification-like panel for controlling tunes.
All in all, it’s not a huge change coming to Android 11. I don’t mind losing the full-screen album art — it often looked pixelated or poor quality anyway, which bugged me. I’m sure some will dislike the change as well, though. Hopefully a solid reason for the switch becomes clear soon.
Source: Google Issue Tracker Via: XDA Developers
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