{"id":163498,"date":"2025-06-06T17:27:09","date_gmt":"2025-06-06T17:27:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163498\/"},"modified":"2025-06-06T17:27:09","modified_gmt":"2025-06-06T17:27:09","slug":"googles-pixel-watch-is-learning-to-automatically-lock-your-phone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/163498\/","title":{"rendered":"Google&#8217;s Pixel Watch is learning to automatically lock your phone"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img class=\"e_Mg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"eager\"  title=\"google pixel watch 2 unlock pixel 8 pro\"  alt=\"google pixel watch 2 unlock pixel 8 pro\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/google-pixel-watch-2-unlock-pixel-8-pro-scaled.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority<\/p>\n<p>TL;DR<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Watch Unlock on the Pixel Watch allows your smartwatch\u2019s presence to keep your phone unlocked.<\/li>\n<li>Right now, that doesn\u2019t work in the opposite direction, and walking away from your phone won\u2019t automatically lock it.<\/li>\n<li>Google appears to be working on a \u201clock on disconnect\u201d option that would finally offer that ability.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>While there\u2019s no guaranteed way to prevent phone theft, making sure you keep your handset locked is probably the single easiest and most effective step you can take. Android already offers plenty of ways to help make sure your phone is locked when it needs to be, like how <a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/theft-detection-lock-useful-android-feature-3443634\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Theft Detection Lock<\/a> can use device sensors to recognize when it\u2019s been snatched out of your hands, and accordingly lock things down. Today we\u2019re looking into another development in this direction, as we spot evidence for a new auto-lock feature.<\/p>\n<p> You&#8217;re reading an <strong>Authority Insights<\/strong> story on Android Authority. Discover <a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/tag\/authority-insights\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><strong>Authority Insights<\/strong><\/a> for more exclusive reports, app teardowns, leaks, and in-depth tech coverage you won&#8217;t find anywhere else.<\/p>\n<p>An\u00a0<b data-stringify-type=\"bold\">APK teardown<\/b> helps predict features that may arrive on a service in the future based on work-in-progress code. However, it is possible that such predicted features may not make it to a public release.<\/p>\n<p>Pixel Watch users can already take advantage of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/pixel-watch-unlock-3394192\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Watch Unlock<\/a> to use the presence of their wearable to keep their phone unlocked \u2014 so long as your Watch itself is unlocked, when it\u2019s nearby and connected to your phone over Bluetooth, you won\u2019t need to enter your PIN or use biometrics on the phone.<\/p>\n<p>Watch Unlock works great for what it is \u2014 you even get a notification on your wrist and can manually re-lock the phone \u2014 but so far it\u2019s only really functioned in this one direction. That is, while the presence of your Pixel Watch can be used to unlock your phone, we haven\u2019t had the option where its absence locks your phone. That\u2019s a shame, because something like that could be handy if you\u2019ve got an especially long screen timeout setting, and are worried about accidentally wandering off and leaving your phone somewhere while it\u2019s unlocked.<\/p>\n<p>Code<\/p>\n<p>Copy TextPhone will lock when it disconnects from your watch, like when it\u2019s far away&#13;<br \/>\nLock phone when left behind<\/p>\n<p>Looking at version 3.5.0.758720535 of the Google Pixel Watch app, we spot some new text strings that appear to quite clearly describe just that kind of auto-lock ability. This \u201clock on disconnect\u201d feature would look for the presence of your connected Pixel Watch, and activate your screen lock when that connection is lost.<\/p>\n<p>While we\u2019re not seeing this in the app just yet, Telegram user nailsad_eleos was able to coax out an early appearance in the settings menu:<\/p>\n<p><img class=\"e_Mg\" decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\"  title=\"pixel watch lock disconnect\"  alt=\"pixel watch lock disconnect\" src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/pixel-watch-lock-disconnect--scaled.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p>@nailsad_eleos \/ Telegram<\/p>\n<p>As you can see, it\u2019s not at all functional at the moment, but this is at least where we should expect this control to show up once Google\u2019s ready to share it.<\/p>\n<p>Admittedly, this feature might be a bit of an edge case in terms of the security need it addresses, but we can imagine that lots of Pixel Watch owners might still appreciate the peace of mind from this kind of extra protection. We\u2019ll let you know if and when we\u2019re able to get it working.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Got a tip? Talk to us!<\/strong>\u00a0Email our staff at <a class=\"c-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.androidauthority.com\/pixel-watch-phone-lock-3565031\/mailto:news@androidauthority.com\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" data-stringify-link=\"mailto:tips@androidauthority.com\" data-sk=\"tooltip_parent\" aria-haspopup=\"menu\" target=\"_blank\">news@androidauthority.com<\/a>. You can stay anonymous or get credit for the info, it&#8217;s your choice.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rita El Khoury \/ Android Authority TL;DR Watch Unlock on the Pixel Watch allows your smartwatch\u2019s presence to&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":163499,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3160],"tags":[2240,1685,867,18952,68633,53,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-163498","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gadgets","8":"tag-authority-insights","9":"tag-gadgets","10":"tag-google","11":"tag-google-pixel-watch","12":"tag-lock-screen","13":"tag-technology","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114637599327910301","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163498","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163498"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163498\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/163499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163498"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163498"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163498"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}