The Android Nougat had this nifty feature in Developer Preview 4, where you can enable the option to quickly reply to messages right from the lock screen when the device is locked, without needing to unlock it first — no need to enter unlock code or move finger to scanner before sending that quick yes or no or whatever. But it’s gone from the developer preview 5, and possibly Nougat, for now.

On DP4, if you went to Settings – Notifications – Configure notifications, and tapped on ‘On the lock screen’, you were greeted with your usual set of three options regarding whether to show notifications on lock screen or not, but with an additional option in the form of a checkbox: ‘If device is locked, prevent typing replies or other text in notifications’. Keeping this un-ticked will allow you to send reply without unlocking the device.

That meant that quick replies to Facebook messenger and WhatsApp didn’t require you to unlock the device — which was great! On DP5 though, the same setting has undergone a change. It’s back to what it was on Marshmallow.

Maybe Google is working on initial feedback received on DP4 on that particular option, and ironing out issues with it so that it could be introduced in final build of Android Nougat. Or, stats could have told Google that people rarely used that additional feature, thus Nougat team culling on it.

Either way, we think it was a great feature! In the age of messenger apps, the ability to send your emojis, ya, np, gah!, kk, etc. directly from lock screen without the bother of unlocking is plenty helpful.

You can ask Google to bring it back, for which, visit this page on Android Issues Tracker here, and star this issue. More stars it get, more likely it becomes that Google team would bring the feature back.

Thanks for the tip, Naitik!