I was out to dinner with my phone face-down the whole time. Picked it up to check a text on the way home. The Conference Finals score was right there on the lock screen before I’d even unlocked it.

Quick answer: Android Lock Screen Notifications is a setting that controls how much notification content appears before you unlock your phone. To hide it: open Settings, tap Notifications, tap Notifications on lock screen, select Hide sensitive content. The setting is categorized as a privacy control for banking and messages, not spoiler prevention, so no one thinks to look there for sports.

What’s happening

You didn’t open the app. You didn’t ask for the score. Android shows notification content on your lock screen by default, so ESPN, the NBA app, Google Discover, Bleacher Report — any of them can surface a score before you even unlock.

How to turn it off

  1. Open Settings
  2. Tap Notifications
  3. Tap Notifications on lock screen
  4. Choose Hide sensitive content or Don’t show notifications at all

This hides the text of notifications on your lock screen. You’ll still see that you have a notification — just not what it says.

Why it’s buried

The setting is filed under notification privacy. It was designed to hide banking alerts and private messages, not playoff scores. But it works for exactly this. You can also turn off specific notification types per app if you want to keep some alerts visible.

The bigger picture

People are so frustrated by sports spoilers that entire apps exist just to show NBA scores without ruining the game. The Android setting that fixes it is documented as a privacy feature, so nobody thinks to look there for sports. There are entire guides dedicated to avoiding spoilers online. On social media, you can mute specific words to filter spoilers from your timeline.

Your phone already has the fix. It’s just not where you’d think to look. That’s why we built TrueTo. One place for the settings that actually help.

Enjoy the game tonight.