Lockscreen Extensibility Framework

[Dustin Hodges]

During the BUILD keynote, which many of us watched online, and some of us attended live, they talked about developer API's for creating custom lockscreens. However, Microsoft stated these would not be available till a later date.

This brings me to something i found: a "Lockscreen Extensibility" framework within the SDK (Windows.Phone.System.LockScreenExtensibility namespace). According to the corresponding developer page, it is only available to Windows Phone 8.1, and furthermore, only usable within Silverlight applications.

Does anyone know exactly how this is used, and if it is the very thing MS mentioned? Or is this perhaps another api entirely?

FYI: The msdn library page is pretty much useless when it comes to explaining how these are used

 

[Expression2]

You have my attention! I'll help discover the uses of this API

 

[Dustin Hodges]

I tried creating a simple app with a toggle switch that activates it as an overlay app and lockscreen app, using these (With "using Windows.Phone.System.LockScreenExtensibility" declared at the top of mainpage.xaml.cs)

ExtensibilityApp.RegisterLockScreenApplication
ExtensibilityApp.RegisterSystemOverlay Application

As well as this to check if its registered to determine the default toggle position:

ExtensibilityApp.IsLockScreenApplicationRegistered()

However, the minute I called IsLockScreenApplicationRegistered the debugger threw an ACCESS DENIED error. And if its anything like the same error when implementing the new file picker, it means there is something missing in your manifest, such as a declaration, capability, or extension. Furthermore, since the common things were enabled (background tasks, libraries, etc), one could assume the lockscreen extensibility framework functions similar to Windows Phone 8 lockscreen backgrounds, which require a custom extension declared in the manifest with is corresponding name and GUID (consumerID). So it looks as if the challenge is finding the proper extension information. There's also likely other functions required to set the lockscreen via the other namespaces, that tie into the framework.