If you want weather forecasts and daily quotes on your lock screen, check out Today Widgets for Windows Phone 8. It uses the Bing Image of the Day as the lock screen background and adds widgets over it. There are only a couple of widgets right now. Weather and quotes are currently supported, but more should be coming.
The help screen shows up when you first open the app. It tells you to pin the app to your home screen and configure the widgets.
Swipe to the right to configure the weather widget. You can change the number of days in the forecast from 2 to 5. Make sure the location services on your phone is enabled to show accurate weather forecast. You can also change the units to Fahrenheit or Celsius. You can see a preview of the widget in this section. Don’t want the weather widget on the lock screen? You can turn it off.
The daily quotes widget is new to Today Widgets 2.0. There are six categories to choose from: funny, management, sports, life, love, and inspire. We like that you can preview how it looks in this setting.
By default, it uses the Bing Image of the Day, you can change this to any of your photos. Select from any of the albums available in your camera roll or even Facebook, if you added your Facebook account to your Windows Phone.
One downside to this app is that you need to open it at least once every 14 days to continue the lock screen update task. It would have been nice to set it once and then leave it alone. Today Widgets is free at the Windows Phone Store. There are ads in the app when setting up the widgets, but no ads show up in the lock screen. If you don’t want to see any ads at all, there’s an in-app purchase for $1.29.
What other widgets would you like on your lock screen? Let us know in the comments!
Reader comments
Today Widgets - add weather forecasts and quotes to your lock screen
Don't refresh lock screen until open app :(
Lockie has all of these features and then some. Sticking with Lockie.
It's crashing on my 920 :(
I would like to see my calendar activities.
Really, 1520 is just BIIGGGGGG
Does not load "user image" as lockscreen background. I have no idea why
And I'd like to know what's the source for weather forecast
Same, the "User Image" feature doesn't appear to work
Me too.
Useless app
Great app!
Was the cover picture taken with Nokia Refocus?
And again.. What countries available on bing lockscreen?
As always? (US, FR, GR, CN)?
Red 1520 teasing photo grrr still waiting xp
I've been using this one for a while now. I love the week weather forecast which they don't show here. One of the better looking ones. It can get buggy at times and force you to update it manually but it's not too bad. all you do is open the app, it updates and than you close it. It seems to happen when there is no service. I guess that messes it up. I also haven't noticed any effect on my battery which is a big plus.
If you want a good looking weather by week on your lock screen...download Amazing Weather HD
widgets, tiles, messigings items? The wordlingo is getting confusing. Widgets reminds me of android, but this is windows phone, right??
Symbian had widgets too.
Not a major OS.
What's a Symbian?
What's a lumia 900?
You've not lived.
I can't use my own image. Dunno why. Lockmix is nicer. Chill! ;)
Looks neat on my 920
Mark, the problem about opening the app at least once every 14 days is not because of the app. It is yet another poorly design issue with Windows Phone background tasks.
Poor design for some, blessing for the others. Why would I want an app I only use once a month to consume data and battery when I don't even look at its content anyway!? It is clever design as far as I am concerned as most customers download apps and then don't use all of them always. They just sit there using up data and battery in background and we forget about them anyway.
It is the primary reason users complain about app live tiles stopping. If you do not want an app to use resources, which you have already permitted it to do in its settings, then uninstall it or turn the setting off! That is not a lot to expect. Conversely, a big strength of Windows phone lies in the live tiles. Users do not need to use the app once they have set their tile up the way they like, they just follow the tile. For that to just stop happening because they do not open the app, is a failure to come up with a decent resource management scheme, and to resort to a broken one.
This may be irrelevant to the article but still...RIP Paul Walker:'(
Roger Rodas died in that crash too, he was a professional race driver and part owner of a performance parts company. R.I.P. Paul Walker and Roger Rodas :(
Used to use this app, but right now lockmix is the best of the bunch for me. Love the live-tile styled widgets.
Dungeon hunter 4 is available in 'windows store'.
Thanks for the heads up! I wish it would come out for windows phone soon
The windows 8 version is not xbox but atleast its free
I don't think the windows phone version will have Xbox either. I just hope it comes out really soon, because I'd probably play it on my phone more than I would on my win 8 laptop lol
I am using awesome lock, pretty good. But I love the meaning quote of this app, perhaps will give a shot later
What is that YouTube service notification?
That's email
Damn that big ass screen looks amazing
I like this better than the other ones.
Even if today is sunday u wp people keep posting thats good to see after so many months
Lockie is still my fav app
Lockmix is more complete, but looks good