iOS 27 Adds Four New iPhone Lock Screen Customization Options
iOS 27 adds AI Extend wallpapers, Image Playground wallpaper generation, a movable clock and a swipeable Now Playing widget to the iPhone Lock Screen, 9to5Mac reports.
The Extend feature arrives alongside other Apple Intelligence editing tools in the Photos app, among them a revamped Clean Up and a Reframe option. Extend uses AI to generate additional image content around the edges of a picture, allowing users to adjust its aspect ratio, straighten horizons or simply add space around the borders. The same tool reaches the Lock Screen: when a photo does not match the iPhone's aspect ratio or is not cropped quite right for use as a wallpaper, iOS 27 automatically suggests using Extend to correct it, giving users more flexibility when setting an image as their background.
Changes to Image Playground, Apple's app for generating images with artificial intelligence, also extend to the Lock Screen. Users can now generate wallpapers from the wallpaper picker in Settings or from the Lock Screen itself. The picker gains a new "Image Playground" option that creates stylized versions of images from the user's Photos library, including styles such as "Retro Illustration" and "Animation." A wallpaper can also be created from scratch by describing the desired result in natural language.
The update also lets users shrink the Lock Screen clock and move it up to the top row of widgets. Apple has allowed clock size customization for several years; iOS 27 adds the ability to reposition it. Moving the clock frees space so more of the wallpaper is visible, though it comes at the cost of being able to read the time from a distance. For users whose main interest in the Lock Screen is displaying a wallpaper, the change makes that easier.
Separately, iOS 27 allows the Now Playing widget on the Lock Screen to be swiped away. Content that is playing continues to play even after the widget is cleared, which the report notes is useful for users who tap the widget accidentally.
iOS 27 continues Apple's broader effort to give users more control over the look of the Lock Screen, following earlier rounds of customization options and wallpaper settings. 9to5Mac's report did not state a release date for the software or list the devices that will support the new features.