Guide
How to Set a Wallpaper on Android
Use your phone's wallpaper settings or the gallery's "Set as wallpaper" option, and choose a portrait image at least as large as your screen.
Download the original file
Download the original from the wallpaper page in your browser. Android saves it to the Downloads folder, and gallery apps such as Google Photos or Samsung Gallery pick it up from there automatically. Using the downloaded file rather than a screenshot keeps the full resolution and avoids capturing the page around the image.
Setting it on a Pixel or stock Android phone
- Touch and hold an empty part of the home screen and tap Wallpaper & style.
- Tap More wallpapers or My photos, then pick the downloaded image.
- Pinch and drag to frame it, then tap the tick or Set wallpaper.
- Choose Home screen, Lock screen or Home and lock screens.
Android can also tint system colours to match the new wallpaper. If the colours change in a way you do not like, pick a different palette in the same Wallpaper & style screen.
Samsung Galaxy and other brands
On Samsung phones, open the image in Gallery, tap the three-dot menu and choose Set as wallpaper, then select the lock screen, home screen or both. The same option is available from Settings → Wallpaper and style. Phones from Xiaomi, OnePlus, Motorola and others follow the same pattern: either a wallpaper item in Settings, or a "Set as wallpaper" or "Use as" option in the gallery's menu. The exact wording varies by brand and Android version, but both routes lead to the same framing screen.
Which size fits an Android phone
Most current Android phones are between 1080 and 1440 pixels wide and between 2340 and 3200 pixels tall, with tall shapes from 19.5:9 to 20:9. A portrait wallpaper of 2160 × 3840 or larger covers almost all of them with room to spare; Android trims the sides slightly to match the taller screen.
Some launchers scroll the wallpaper sideways as you swipe between home screens. That needs an image wider than the screen, and the launcher enlarges a normal portrait image to create the extra width. If your wallpaper looks zoomed in, look for a "scrolling wallpaper" or similar switch in the launcher settings and turn it off, or crop a slightly wider image with the Crop & Scale tool.
Foldables and tablets
Foldable phones have two screens with very different shapes: a tall outer display and an almost square inner one. Most let you set a separate wallpaper for each, which gives better framing than stretching one image across both. Android tablets rotate like iPads, so a large image with the subject in the centre, or a square crop, works best.
