iOS 17 brings a completely redesigned wallpaper picker that makes it easier than ever to customize your iPhone’s lock screen and home screen. With new intelligent suggestions, expanded editing tools, and seamless integration with Photos, Use iOS 17’s Redesigned Wallpaper Picker delivers a best-in-class personalization experience.
In this guide, we’ll walk through everything you need to know to master the use iOS 17 Redesigned wallpaper picker
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Accessing the Redesigned Wallpaper Picker
The wallpaper picker has moved out of the Settings app and now lives prominently on the lock screen. Here’s how to access it:
- Wake your iPhone and swipe left on the lock screen to reveal the redesigned wallpaper picker. Alternatively, press and hold on the lock screen for a couple seconds until the “Customize” button appears, then tap it.
- Tap the “+” button to bring up the wallpaper selection interface.
From here, you can browse and select wallpapers for both your lock screen and home screen. Let’s look at the options.
Browsing Wallpaper Collections
The updated wallpaper picker organizes selections into distinct collections to streamline browsing:
- Photos: Browse photos from your personal library. iOS intelligently suggests aesthetically pleasing images.
- Live: Choose from a range of animated wallpapers with dynamic motion and perspective. New categories added in iOS 17 include Weather, Astronomy, and Emoji.
- Profiles: Select different wallpaper pairs linked to Focus profiles like Work, Sleep, Fitness, and more.
- Stock: Apple includes a curated set of high-quality stock wallpapers showcasing seasonal designs, abstract art, landscapes, and more.
You can swipe horizontally between collections and vertically within a collection to preview available wallpapers. Tap any thumbnail to view the wallpaper in full screen.
Selecting a New Wallpaper
Once you’ve found a wallpaper you like, tap “Add” to set it as your wallpaper. Here are the selection options:
- Lock Screen – Set the image as your lock screen background.
- Home Screen – Set it as your home screen background.
- Both – Use the wallpaper across both lock and home screens. This automatically creates a coordinated wallpaper pair.
For live wallpapers, you can tap “Play” to preview the animation before adding it.
Editing Tools for Personalization
The real power of the wallpaper picker comes from the built-in editing tools that let you customize wallpapers to your liking. Tap “Customize Home Screen” or “Customize Lock Screen” to access the following:
Adjust Wallpaper Color & Style
- Wallpaper Hue – Drag the slider to dynamically change the wallpaper’s predominant hue. This makes it easy to coordinate colors.
- Filters – Swipe through and add filters like Vivid, Dramatic, and Warm to alter the mood and style.
- Blur – Enable this to softly blur the home screen wallpaper so app icons and text stand out more. Customize the blur strength.
Overlay Color for Text
Adjust the color overlay behind the date/time text and widgets on the lock screen for optimal contrast and legibility.
Change Lock Screen Text
- Font – Iterate through font options for the date and time text. Find the style that best matches your wallpaper.
- Color – Dial in the perfect shade for the text via the color picker.
Home Screen Widgets
Add widgets like At A Glance, calendar events, weather, and more to your home screen. Adjust each widget’s transparency level so it blends nicely with the wallpaper.
The ability to tweak every aspect of your wallpaper setup makes the editing tools incredibly versatile for designers and creatives who want fine-grained customization.
Smart Wallpaper Suggestions
The wallpaper picker aims to simplify personalization with intelligent suggestions powered by on-device machine learning. As you pick wallpapers, iOS studies your selections and refines recommendations to better match your taste.
Key areas where you’ll notice smarter suggestions include:
Complementary Wallpaper Pairs
When setting a new wallpaper, the picker will automatically generate an aesthetic match for your opposite screen (home or lock). The paired suggestion makes it effortless to achieve a unified wallpaper theme.
Over time, iOS gets better at proposing pairings you’re likely to enjoy. You can always customize or reject the suggestion and choose your own combo.
Photo Picks
In the Photos collection, you’ll see iOS spotlights eye-catching images from your library and proposes ones likely to make great wallpapers. This uses factors like color vibrancy, lighting, composition, and more.
The algorithm avoids repetitive suggestions and continually surfaces new finds from your photo history. This makes it easy to regularly change wallpapers to your favorite memories.
Dynamic Suggestions
The wallpaper picker dynamically adapts its suggestions based on real-world context like time of day, location, calendars, recent app usage, and more.
For example, in the morning you may see more peaceful landscapes, while evenings bring out vivid sunsets. Near the holidays, seasonal wallpapers take priority.
This thoughtful context-awareness helps the wallpaper picker stay fresh and relevant to your life.
Coordinating with Focus Modes
iOS 17 takes wallpaper coordination a step further by integrating with Focus modes. The wallpaper picker lets you create and assign different wallpaper sets to profiles like Work, Sleep, Fitness, Gaming, and more.
When you switch Focus modes during the day, your wallpaper will automatically change to match that profile. This provides nice visual reinforcement of entering a new headspace.
To get started:
- In the wallpaper picker, tap the Profiles collection.
- Tap the Focus profile you want to assign a custom wallpaper to.
- Pick your desired wallpaper pair.
- Toggle on “Change with Focus” to enable the pairing.
Now whenever you activate that Focus, your wallpaper will adapt automatically. Feel free to create complementary pairings for multiple Focus modes.
Optimized Performance
To ensure fluid performance, the redesigned wallpaper picker employs optimizations like:
- Lower resolution previews – Thumbnails are scaled down in resolution to save memory and bandwidth. The full image loads at native resolution once selected.
- On-demand asset loading – Wallpaper assets are intelligently loaded just before they appear on screen to minimize resource usage.
- Memory recovery – If system memory runs low, cached wallpaper previews are quickly released to free up capacity.
This keeps the wallpaper picker fast and responsive while conserving battery life – even on older iPhone models. Smooth scrolling persists whether you have 10 or 10,000 photos.
Backwards Compatibility
The overhauled wallpaper picker is available exclusively on iOS 17 and iPhone 14 models. Older iPhones running iOS 16 or below maintain the original wallpaper experience found in Settings.
However, once you upgrade to iOS 17, any customizations you’ve made to wallpaper, widgets, fonts, colors, etc get seamlessly migrated over. So you’ll pick up right where you left off with all settings intact.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some common questions about the new wallpaper picker in iOS 17:
How do I access the wallpaper picker?
Swipe left on your lock screen and tap the “+” button, or long press on the lock screen and tap “Customize”.
Can I still use Live Wallpapers?
Yes, Live Wallpapers have their own dedicated category now in the redesigned picker.
What’s the difference between lock screen and home screen customization?
You can customize both independently – selecting different wallpapers, widgets, fonts, colors, etc.
What happens if I set a new Focus wallpaper?
When that Focus activates, your wallpaper will automatically change to the assigned pair.
Why doesn’t the new wallpaper picker work on my old iPhone?
The redesigned experience is limited to iOS 17, which only runs on iPhone 14 models currently.
How do wallpaper suggestions work?
iOS uses on-device intelligence to suggest aesthetically matching wallpapers and surface new ones you may like.
Can I recover deleted Photos wallpapers?
Unfortunately deleted Photos cannot be recovered within the wallpaper picker. You’ll need to restore them from a backup.
Conclusion
The overhauled wallpaper picker brings delightful polish, personalization, and intelligence to iOS 17. With its easy access from the lock screen, expanded editing tools, Focus integration, and smart suggestions, the wallpaper picker makes it effortless to customize your iPhone and keep it fresh.
Small touches like aesthetic wallpaper pairs, dynamic recommendations, and memory optimizations underscore Apple’s attention to detail. For those who cherish their iPhone’s look and feel, the wallpaper picker offers new creative freedom.
So explore, experiment, and express yourself! Take advantage of the wallpaper picker’s capabilities to make your iPhone truly your own with iOS 17.
