It’s still possible to enable the AOSP Lock Screen on HTC Devices

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Over the years, the lock screen has evolved with the changing design language of Google’s Android. Starting with Android 5.0 Lollipop, the lock screen developed a Material Design flavor and implemented rich notification support. But apart from Motorola, OnePlus, and a couple of other outliers, most OEMs have opted to use their own lock screen implementation in lieu of the AOSP one. HTC is no exception in that regard. However, a peculiarity with the way HTC chose to implement their lock screen has allowed end-users to disable the stock HTC lock screen. Years later, it appears that the trick still works. Here’s how it works and how it’s done.

Disable the HTC Lockscreen using ADB

Usually, the lock screen is contained within the framework-res.apk, which is pre-installed as a system app and cannot be modified without root. Furthermore, disabling the app would prove to be a very, very bad idea as it would almost certainly result in a bootloop. HTC, though, does not actually pack their custom lock screen within framework-res, and instead pre-installs their lock screen app on all of their devices. Fortunately for us, this means we can disable this package without causing any issues with the system!

To do so, you’ll need to connect to your device via ADB and send a simple command. First, make sure you have the ADB binaries downloaded onto your computer. We recommend grabbing Minimal ADB & Fastboot from our forums. Next, install the necessary HTC drivers for your device. Finally, once you’ve got ADB and the drivers set up, open a command prompt and issue the following commands:

adb shell pm hide com.htc.lockscreen

If the command returns ‘hidden: true’ then it was successful in hiding the lock screen package. Now, simply reboot your device and you should see the stock AOSP lock screen! As a bonus, by re-enabling the AOSP lock screen, you will apparently gain the ability to double tap the power button to launch the camera.

We hope you enjoy this mini customization tutorial. Do note that we’ve personally tested this on an unrooted HTC 10 with the September security patches, but this should work on most other HTC devices. Try it out for yourself! If we come across anything we think you might find interesting, we’ll be sure to let you guys know in a future article.