Trusted Reviews is supported by its audience. If you purchase through links on our site, we may earn a commission.Learn more.
How to change your iPhone wallpaper
In This Article
Looking to update your iPhone’s wallpaper? Here’s how to change your lock screen, your home screen or both photos in just a handful of steps.
Changing your phone’s wallpaper is one of the easiest ways to customise your phone’s appearance without spending money on additional accessories like phone cases or grips. It’s also a fun way to display photos of your family, friends, pets, holiday snaps, or really just whatever you want to see whenever you pick up your device.
Apple allows iPhone users to set their home screen and lock screen individually, so you can choose two different photos to set as your wallpaper, pictures that pair well together or just use the same image for both. Most iPhones also support Live wallpapers at this point, meaning you can even set one that moves and comes to life when you tap and hold the screen.
Read on to learn how to change your iPhone’s wallpaper from your settings, or scroll to the troubleshooting section at the bottom of this guide to discover how to do it from your Photos.
What you’ll need:
The Short Version
How to change your iPhone wallpaper
Step1
Open your phone’s settings
You can also change your wallpaper directly from your Photos. For steps on how to do this, scroll down to the Troubleshooting section of this guide.
Step2
Tap Wallpaper
You may need to scroll down to find this option.
Step3
Tap Choose a New Wallpaper
You can also tap on either of your existing wallpapers to move or scale them at this stage.
Step4
Select a folder
You can choose between Apple’s collections of Dynamic, Still and Live images or pick one of your own folders to use an image from your Photos.
Step5
Tap the image you want to set as your wallpaper
We used one of Apple’s Stills for this example, but you can also choose one from your Photos.
Step6
Move or scale the image and click Set
You can move the image by dragging it or scale it by pinching in or out with two fingers.
Step7
Decide where you want to set the wallpaper
You can choose whether you want to set it as your lock screen, set it as your home screen or use the same image for both.
Troubleshooting
You can also change your iPhone wallpaper directly from your Photos.To do this, open the Photos app, tap the image you want to set as your new wallpaper, tap the arrow in the bottom left corner and tap Use as Wallpaper. Then just follow steps 6 and 7 above to adjust and set your new wallpaper.
If you want your iPhone wallpaper to move, you can do this by using one of Apple’s Live wallpapers or any of your own Live Photos.This option is supported on all Apple phone after theiPhone 6s, aside from theiPhone XRand the iPhone SE (1stand2nd gen).
You might like…
Hannah joined Trusted Reviews as a staff writer in 2019 after graduating with a degree in English from Royal Holloway, University of London. She’s also worked and studied in the US, holding positions …
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
Why trust our journalism?
Founded in 2003, Trusted Reviews exists to give our readers thorough, unbiased and independent advice on what to buy.
Today, we have millions of users a month from around the world, and assess more than 1,000 products a year.
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
