Guide
How to Set a Wallpaper on iPhone and iPad
Save the image to Photos, add it as a new Lock Screen and Home Screen pair, and pick a portrait file large enough for your device.
Save the image to Photos first
iOS and iPadOS choose wallpapers from the Photos library, so the first step is getting the file there. Open the wallpaper page in Safari, download the original, and open it from the download list or the Files app. Tap the Share button and choose Save Image. The picture now appears in Photos at its full resolution.
Avoid taking a screenshot of the preview instead. A screenshot is limited to your screen's pixels and includes whatever else was visible, while the downloaded original keeps every pixel the creator provided.
Add it as a Lock Screen and Home Screen pair
- Open Settings → Wallpaper and tap Add New Wallpaper. You can also touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap the add button, and start from there.
- Choose Photos and select the image you saved.
- Pinch to zoom and drag to position the picture. The clock and widgets are drawn on top, so keep important detail away from the upper third.
- Tap Add. iOS asks whether to set the image as a wallpaper pair, which uses it on both screens, or to customise the Home Screen separately, for example with a blurred version or a plain colour.
A shortcut from Photos works too: open the image, tap Share, then Use as Wallpaper. Menu names can change slightly between iOS versions, but the flow through Settings → Wallpaper has stayed the same for several releases.
Which size fits an iPhone
Recent iPhones have screens roughly 1170 to 1320 pixels wide and 2530 to 2870 pixels tall, in a tall shape of about 19.5:9. A portrait wallpaper of 2160 × 3840 or larger therefore has more than enough pixels for every current model. It is a little less tall in proportion (9:16), so iOS trims a strip from each side to fill the screen; subjects near the centre stay in view.
Landscape desktop wallpapers are a poor fit. Filling a portrait screen with a 16:9 image keeps only a narrow vertical slice of the middle, and the slice has to be enlarged, so it loses sharpness. Look for portrait wallpapers, or use the Crop & Scale tool on a VividWall wallpaper page to cut a portrait version at your exact screen size before saving it.
iPad: plan for rotation
An iPad wallpaper is shown in both portrait and landscape as you rotate the device, and iPadOS fills the screen in each orientation by cropping a different part of the image. The safest choice is a square-ish image, or a large image with the subject in the centre and calm areas around it. A 3840 × 3840 crop of a 4K wallpaper, made with the Crop & Scale tool, rotates cleanly on every iPad.
When the wallpaper looks zoomed or blurry
- It moves as you tilt the phone. That is the Perspective Zoom effect, which enlarges the image slightly so it can shift. Turn it off in the wallpaper editor if you want the exact framing.
- The subject is cut off by the clock. Some photo wallpapers support a depth effect that places the subject in front of the clock; it only works when iOS can separate the subject from the background, and it switches off when widgets overlap the subject.
- It looks soft. Check the original's pixel dimensions on the wallpaper page. An image below your screen's resolution has to be enlarged; choose a larger one.
