How to customise your wallpaper

Add some personality to your Android device and liven up your lock screen with these fun tips. Discover how you can switch up your wallpaper to make it your own and even get a little help from AI.

Choose from ready-made wallpapers or give your lock screen a personal touch by using one of your photos as its background.

To do so on Samsung devices, go to Settings, tap Wallpapers and style > Change wallpapers, then select a photo from your Gallery. On Pixels, press and hold anywhere on your home screen until a menu appears, then tap Wallpaper & style > More wallpapers > My photos.

If you're a Pixel user, take a look at the Emoji Workshop in your wallpaper settings to create fun patterns using your fave emojis. Tap 'Inspire me' to generate a random design or create your own – from a mosaic of monkey faces to a prism of poop emojis (you do you).

Bored with your wallpaper? Shake things up by setting it to change automatically. On Samsung devices, just tap Change wallpaper > Wallpaper services > Dynamic lock screen. Then choose up to five image categories to display at random each time that you turn on your phone screen. On a Pixel? Choose a set of wallpapers to rotate daily by tapping the circular arrow at the top right-hand side of an applicable theme.

You can also turn your photos into dynamic 3D backgrounds with Pixel’s Cinematic wallpaper feature: simply open your Wallpaper & style settings and tap 'More wallpapers', then 'My photos'. Next, choose an image to preview, tap the star icon in the top right-hand corner and toggle on 'Create Cinematic wallpaper'.

Get creative with AI-generated wallpapers of anything from castles made of flowers to surrealist beach scenes. On Samsung devices, find them in Settings, Wallpapers and style > Change wallpapers > Creative > Generative. If you're on a Pixel 8 Plus or above, they're currently available in the More wallpapers section of your device's Wallpaper & style settings.

On both Samsungs and Pixels, start by selecting a theme, then tap 'Inspire me' or tap the highlighted words to edit the theme's prompts. Then hit 'Generate' (on Samsungs) or 'Create wallpaper' (on Pixels) to see your new image come to life and swipe through to view more variations. To make an image your home or lock screen, tap 'Set' or 'Set wallpaper' on Samsung devices or select the tick on Pixels.

Want to make your clock face cooler? On Samsung devices, go to Settings > Wallpaper and Style to view your current lock screen, which you can tap to edit. Then, just tap the clock to pull up different clock face options and colours and select the one that you want displayed.

If you’re on a Pixel, go to Settings, then tap 'Wallpaper & style' (making sure that you’re on the lock screen tab). You can then swipe between different clock face options or tap 'Clock colour and size' to customise your clock face even further.