Show iPhone lock screen with seconds (own usage)

Question

Note: this is not intended to be published by Apple - it's for my own usage

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Looking at having seconds shown on the lock screen of my iPhone (iOS 11).
There doesn't seem to be any setting that reaches that goal.

So I'm contemplating doing this via a program.

Now:

Goal:

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edit

The lock screen is protected, for good reasons, but again the app will not be published.

This answer (how-to-set-lock-screen-wallpaper-and-ringtone-programmatically-in-iphone) addresses static data of the lock screen (and is quite old).

Is there a plist, not directly accessible from the UI, where a property could be changed programmaticaly, in order to show seconds?

Or is there a way to achieve this thanks to an API, change the View behavior to include seconds?

Answer 1

Make a Today extension (aka Widget). The biggest downside is that you'll need to swipe right in order to see it. I've made the complete code available here. I don't think posting the code in this answer brings a lot of value because it is ultimately very trivial. It's just a timer that updates a label (aka a clock).

Today extensions let you run a tiny app on the lock screen. So you can show a clock, and while it is visible you can update the view live. (Whenever the view is not completely visible, the system shows the last snapshot.) But, the page with the widgets is "to the left" of the notifications/clock page so you have to swipe right if you want to see it widget. So long as you can go the extra distance of waking up the screen and then swiping right, this solution may work for you.

The gif doesn't capture the sub-second updating very well, but it looks nice on my phone. If I ever have the need to see the time like this, I'll be glad to have solved the problem already.

Notes: * It seems like on Xcode 9.3 you'll need to run the project 2 times to get it to show up. I read that in the release notes a dozen times but never knew what it meant until now.