How to set a wallpaper on iPhone

Setting a wallpaper on an iPhone takes about a minute once the picture is in the right place. This guide covers the lock screen, the home screen and the depth effect, then the small problems that make a good wallpaper look wrong. The steps match iOS 16 and later; menu names shift a little between versions, but the route stays the same.

Get the wallpaper into Photos first

Your iPhone can only use pictures that are in the Photos app. When you tap Download on a wallpaper page, Safari saves the file to the Files app, not to Photos. To move it across:

1. Open the Files app and go to Downloads.
2. Tap the wallpaper to open it.
3. Tap the Share button, then Save Image.

It’s now the newest picture in Photos. You may be tempted to touch and hold the preview on a wallpaper page and save that instead. Don’t: previews are smaller than the real file so pages load quickly, and a small picture looks soft on a large screen. The Download button always gives you the full size.

Set it from the Photos app

This is the quickest way, and it works on any recent version of iOS.

1. Open Photos and tap the wallpaper.
2. Tap the Share button and scroll down to Use as Wallpaper.
3. Pinch and drag to position it. The clock is drawn on top, so you can see whether it covers anything important.
4. Tap Add.
5. Choose Set as Wallpaper Pair to use it on both the lock screen and the home screen, or Customize Home Screen to give the home screen something different.

Set it from the lock screen

Since iOS 16, each lock screen is its own small design, with a wallpaper, a clock style and widgets, and you can keep several and swipe between them.

1. Unlock your iPhone with Face ID or Touch ID, but stay on the lock screen.
2. Touch and hold the lock screen until the lock screens appear side by side.
3. Tap the + button to make a new one, or Customize to change the current one.
4. Tap Photos, choose the wallpaper and position it.
5. Tap Add, then choose a pair or customise the home screen.

You can also start from Settings, then Wallpaper, then Add New Wallpaper. Everything after that is the same.

Give the home screen its own look

When you choose to customise the home screen, the options along the bottom let you keep the same picture, switch to a plain colour or a gradient, pick a different photo, or blur whichever picture you’ve chosen.

A colour or a gradient keeps icons very easy to read. Blur softens the picture so it sits behind your apps without competing with them. A reliable combination is a detailed wallpaper on the lock screen, where only the clock covers it, and the same picture blurred, or one of its colours, on the home screen. The guide to matching lock screen and home screen sets goes further.

Use the depth effect

The depth effect lets part of the picture, a mountain ridge or the top of a building, sit in front of the clock. iOS turns it on by itself when it finds a clear subject, but you can check:

1. Touch and hold the lock screen and tap Customize, then the lock screen.
2. Tap the More button, the three dots in the bottom corner.
3. Make sure Depth Effect is ticked.

If it’s greyed out, iOS either can’t separate a subject from the background or the subject would hide too much of the clock. Drag the picture down so less of it overlaps the clock and look again. On iOS 16, adding widgets under the clock also turns the depth effect off; later versions allow both.

Depth works best on pictures with one strong shape against a calm sky, which is how most Athiwalls phone wallpapers are composed: the top third is left quiet on purpose.

Fix the most common problems

The wallpaper looks zoomed in. Open the More menu while editing and turn off Perspective Zoom if your version shows it. It lets the picture shift as you tilt the phone, but it enlarges the picture to make room for that movement. Turning on Reduce Motion in Settings, Accessibility, Motion stops the movement too.

It looks soft or blurry. Check you used the full download rather than a screenshot or a saved preview. If you use iCloud Photos with Optimize iPhone Storage turned on, open the picture and wait until the full-size version has loaded before you set it. The guide to why wallpapers look blurry covers every other cause.

The home screen is blurred and you didn’t want that. Customise the home screen again and tap Blur to turn it off.

The clock covers the best part. Drag the picture down until the subject sits below the clock. If that leaves an awkward gap, the picture probably wasn’t composed for a phone, and one with a calm top will sit better.