In October 2013, an app called the “Cover Lock Screen” launched as in beta for Android devices. Cover is an odd kind of app that makes your lock screen more useful, because it makes the apps you use all the time available right there. Basically, Cover provides a quick and easy way to access your favorite apps, as well as get a peek at what’s new.

Cover has other features too, such as setting different ringer volumes and wallpapers for different situations – such as when you’re at home, at work, in the car, or when you’re out and about, and it even learns what apps you frequently use in these different situations, so your lock screen will show different apps, depending on where you are and what you’re doing.

It’s quite an ingenious little app, especially when you consider how crowded the app space is. By dominating the lock screen, the app is front and center with minimal user input.

This is the main reason why Twitter has now decided to acquire Cover, to make its service more prominent by taking over your lock screen.

Announced on Cover’s blog, the company’s employees will be joining Twitter, but it wasn’t clear what the team will be working on. Even so, it seems fairly obvious that Twitter wants to integrate itself with Cover somehow, which means we can expect to see what the people we’re following are up to, just by looking at our phone’s lock screen.

“Twitter, like Cover, believes in the incredible potential of Android. They share our vision that smartphones can be a lot smarter — more useful and more contextual — and together we’re going to make that happen. We’ll be building upon a lot of what makes Cover great, and we’re thrilled to create something even better at Twitter,” Todd Jackson, Ed Ho, and Gordon Luk, co-founders of Cover, wrote on the company’s blog.

The Cover team stated that even though they’ll be joining Twitter, the Cover app will still be available for download on Google Play, but if anything changes, users will be immediately informed.

Android users have many choices when it comes to changing the look of their home screen or lock screen, but the same cannot be said for iOS users.  Yes, there are apps for different wallpapers, and even apps to change fonts, but the lock screen is something Apple has so far refused to let anyone mess with.

With the iPhone, all you can see are notifications, nothing more. It would be great for iOS users if Cover and Twitter can somehow infiltrate Apple’s boring old lock screen, but that will only ever happen if the Cupertino giant agrees.