Just got a new iPhone? If you want to customize it and get a more personalized iPhone, you may change the default ringtones for calls and text messages, change the default wallpaper to your own picture or photo.
Wallpapers are often used to personalize and decorate our phones’ interface. People change the default wallpapers on their phones to reflect the their mood, interests, or aesthetic preferences. Some users prefer wallpapers featuring natural landscapes, such as mountains, forests, beaches, or waterfalls. Some use photos of their loved ones or things, such as family members(your grandma, grandpa, father, mother, kids, wife, husband, girlfriend, boyfriend), friends, pets, artworks, heirlooms, sentimental items, as wallpaper on their phones. Some like the wallpaper to represent their favorite hobby or interest, such as cars, sports, musical instruments, etc.
Do I have to crop an image to fit the screen?
Generally speaking, you don’t have to. The iPhone’s camera, such as the Dual 12MP camera for iPhone 14, can take photos with very high quality, being too large for wallpapers on the phone and even computers. And your iPhone allows you to move, scale and pinch to crop a photo to the right proportion for wallpaper.
If you want to manually crop the perfect wallpaper for iPhone, you don’t need any third-party image editing tools. The built-in Photos app comes with the ability to crop photos to fit as wallpaper on iPhone. Since iOS 16, you can convert a picture to the exact wallpaper dimension directly on your iPhone.
Duplicate photo before cropping
Open the Photos app and select the image you want to duplicate. Tap the Menu button (three dots in the circle) in the upper right corner of the screen. And then select Duplicate. You can then crop the duplicate image without affecting the original.
Crop an image as iPhone wallpaper
Open the Photos app and select the image you want to crop. Tap the Edit button in the upper right corner of the screen. In the editing toolbar at the bottom of the screen, tap the Crop icon. It looks like a square with arrows pointing out from the corners.
Tap the “Aspect ratio” icon at the top. Select Wallpaper from the aspect ratios row at the bottom. Optionally adjust the image by moving it or using two fingers to zoom in or out. When finished, tap Done.
Download wallpapers for iPhone
Except the built-in wallpapers and your own photos, you can also download wallpaper apps from the App Store or download wallpapers or background photos from online wallpaper websites. I found the pexels website is a great source for high quality yet free images and wallpapers. Let us know in the comment section if you have other great websites to download iPhone wallpapers.
Once you have found the photo you like, you can follow these steps to set it as the new wallpaper on iPhone. You will learn different ways to get a customized background on your mobile phone. There are basically two ways to set a picture or photo as wallpaper on iPhone.
Method 1. Change wallpaper from Settings
The Settings app on your iPhone controls many different aspects of your phone. Normally when you want to configure something in the iOS, you should start from the Settings. Tap on to open the Settings on your iPhone. Scroll down to find Wallpapers as shown in below screenshot.
Tap to open the Wallpaper settings screen, you can find the current wallpaper of your iPhone, other wallpapers you used before and the option Add New Wallpaper below them.
Select Add New Wallpaper to add new wallpaper from a category like Photos, Weather & Astronomy, Emoji, Collections, or Color. Tap on Photos to browse to your photo library to choose the photo you like. Or take a quick look at the Suggested Photos see if you can find the one you like. These are the photos saved in your Photo Library and suggested by your iPhone based on your usage and behavior patterns. Additionally, iPhone analyzes the colors and brightness of the photos to make sure they are suitable for use as wallpapers. This built-in feature makes it easier for users to find and use wallpapers that they will enjoy, without having to manually search through their entire photo library.
If you want, you can customize your wallpaper further. For example, you can choose a font and text color, add or remove widgets, apply photo styles, pinch and drag your photo to crop and move, etc.
Tap Add, then choose Set as Wallpaper Pair to use the wallpaper on both the Lock Screen and Home Screen. Or tap Customize Home Screen to make further changes to the Home Screen. Personally I prefer to blur the wallpaper so the apps and icons stand out on the Home Screen.
Method 2. Set a Photo as wallpaper from Library
To change a new wallpaper on iPhone, you can simply pick up any photo from your Camera Roll, then set it directly as the new iPhone background image. It is even easier.
Tap to open Photos app on iPhone. Browse through your Camera Roll folder on iPhone to find your favorite photo which you like to use as your new iPhone wallpaper. Tap to select and display it in the Photos app. You will find a share button on the bottom left corner. Tap on the share button, you will bring up the share options at the lower section of your phone screen.
Tap on the “Use as Wallpaper” option, you will be able to move and scale the selected photo, customise the wallpaper and set it as the new wallpaper for iPhone Lock screen and Home screen.
When I try to use “move and scale”. To adjust the photo’s location on my screen, it will not stay and keeps moving back to the original location.
this issue could be caused by the photo aspect ratio. for example, if you capture a portrait image using your iPhone, then go to set it as the new background, you can barely move or scale it as it fits perfectly with your phone screen; if you take another photo using iPhone in the landscape mode, the photo will be very wide, when you go to set it as the new background, you can move left or right to change its location on the screen. note that the aspect ratio is different from photo resolution. can you please double check?
Is there any way to change my wallpaper with the new ios 10.1.1 update?
I recently changed my wallpaper, is there a quick easy way to change back to the previous wallpaper, without trying to hunt the picture down through photos?
sorry, it seems there is no such option yet. you can’t roll back to previous wallpaper directly on iPhone.
I have my name and home contact no printed on my lock screen. It can’t remember how I did it as I need to move wording higher. How can I move it on lock screen
I am new to iPhone 6s and have had no problems so far. I love the lighthouse wallpaper that I set as lock screen and home screen but I am wondering if there is a way to just see the lighthouse without the apps covering it until I want to use an app.