Lollipop brought a revamp to the lockscreen, taking away custom widgets but showing your notifications instead. If you're a fan of that, you might want an easier way to check your notifications as they come in, without losing your current lockscreen.

Glimpse Notifications by XDA Senior Member xrad offers just that. You'd normally have to turn your screen on manually to see your notifications. Instead, Glimpse Notifications will do it for you when a notification comes in.

That doesn't mean your screen will be turning itself on when you don't need it to, though. Glimpse Notifications comes with some features that'll allow you to make it work the way you want:

  • If you're only interested in having your screen turn on for certain apps' notifications, you can do that. Just select the apps you want in the whitelist and forget about it.
  • Enabling "Pocket mode" makes sure your screen will stay off when your device is in your pocket or face down, by using the proximity sensor. You can also have Glimpse Notifications automatically detect when that is no longer the case, and turn your screen on when you pick your phone up.
  • Last but not least, you can set a time period during which notifications should be ignored, such as your sleeping period.

Glimpse Notifications sets itself apart by appealing to users of the stock lockscreen and offering a simple interface. You just need to install the app, register it as a notification listener and you're good to go. It's completely free, ad-free and requires no special permissions. If this sounds like what you're looking for, head over to the Glimpse Notifications forum thread to get started.