What is the Locket app? New widget popular with TikTok adds loved ones to homescreen
A new app has been topping the Apple App Store charts as a way to both customize your home screen and stay in touch with close friends.
Locket, created by Matt Moss as a present for his girlfriend, functions as a locket of sorts for your home screen. Currently only available for Apple products, the free application advertises “Live pics from friends.”
“It’s like a portal to the people you care about — a little glimpse at what they’re up to throughout the day,” according to the App Store description.
After launching on New Year’s Day, the app has over 2 million downloads as of Jan. 11, according to TechCrunch. It is now, as of Jan. 12, the number one free application on the App Store.
But what does it really do, and why are teenagers on TikTok posting their Locket photos?
Essentially, after you download the app to your home screen you can pick five of your closest friends to add. The app will download as a widget, which is a box that is displayed next to your other applications in a slightly larger format. If you touch the box, the app will open.
Then, throughout the day, you and your friends can upload photos of yourselves or anything you see, to the app.
“I built it as a present for my girlfriend for her birthday last summer. She was going back to school in the fall, so we were about to start a long-distance relationship,” Moss told TechCrunch. “The process of getting a little photo from her on my homescreen…seemed really appealing. Just a nice way to stay in touch.”
But Locket really blew up due to its TikTok strategy, as the app’s page began posting with a custom sound to advertise Locket’s ability to keep friends, people in relationships and loved ones, connected.
TikTokers have been using the Locket sound to showcase their own Lockets. Some of these videos, showing people using their Locket app, have millions of views.
“POV you and (best friend) have this app,” wrote one TikTok user on a video with nearly 5 million views.
Some say Locket has them “obsessed” after “forcing” their loved ones to download the app.
“SPRINTING TO GO PUT THIS ON MY PHONE THIS IS THE CUTEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN,” one user wrote in the comments of a Locket video.
Others are bemoaning the application’s compatibility with only Apple phones.
“Cries in bf with an android,” wrote one user.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 1:08 PM with the headline "What is the Locket app? New widget popular with TikTok adds loved ones to homescreen."
