How To Set a Picture on your Lock Screen in Android

You may have a great Android theme on your smartphone, with attractive background images and great wallpaper. Or you may have some cheesy advertising for your service provider – classy of them to make you pay to advertise their service! If you don’t like your default theme and background, then there’s good news—it’s not hard to change the picture on your lock screen in Android so that you can have whatever image you want as your background.

One of the joys of Android comes from the lack of uniformity in phones. With third-party launchers, icon packs, theming engines, and other tools on Android, you can make your phone look like anything. Of course, this customization means that many phones have different ways of performing tasks as simple as selecting a wallpaper for your lock screen. While we’ll be using Google’s own version of Android on the Pixel line of devices for this guide, if you’re using a Samsung or LG device, you should be able to largely follow along at the same speed. Let’s take a look at how to set your lock screen wallpaper on Android.

Selecting Your Wallpaper through Settings

When you’ve decided you want to change your stock wallpaper to something a big more flashy, grab your phone and head into the settings menu on the device. Depending on the manufacturer of your device, this may look a little different than you’re used to on your phone. For most devices, however, this will follow a standard method no matter what make and model of device you have.

Look for the Display option in your menu, then select it. Inside this menu, look for something that mentions Wallpapers, which should open up the standard wallpapers menu on your phone. On Google’s version of Android, this actually opens the Wallpapers ap0p that you can use to select an art design or anything else. You can pick between selecting from your phone’s photos, or from any of the default wallpapers included on your device. On Samsung devices, there’s only a handful of default wallpapers included on the device, along with plugins for any wallpaper apps you may have downloaded previously. On Google’s phones, the wallpaper app offers hundreds of live and static wallpapers to choose from.

Once you’ve chosen your wallpaper photo, click the selection, then click “Set Wallpaper.” The app will then prompt you with the choice to either set the wallpaper you’ve chosen as your lock screen, home screen, or both. You can make your choice as you wish, either separating your wallpapers or keeping them uniform.

It’s worth noting that some Android phones do not allow you to change your lock screen separate from your home screen, so if you do not have the option to separate your wallpapers, this may be an option lacking in your device.

Select Your Wallpaper through an App

If you’ve chosen a wallpaper app from the Play Store, you may not have to dive into your settings to use it. Instead, just use the wallpaper app to set your wallpaper by selecting the photo you want, then following the on-screen steps that offer wallpaper choices. Typically, there’s a check mark or other signifier to show how to select the wallpaper within the app, but as you might imagine, it’s going to be just a little different for each app.

The Best Wallpaper Apps

If you’re looking for some apps to check out for wallpapers, we have plenty of selections. Backdrops is one of our favorite picks. The app is free to download, though it does include some paid packs for users who want to extend their options. There’s a brand-new, exclusive wallpaper everyday (and they often look fantastic), and though the community portion of the app can be a bit hit or miss, you’ll often find some excellent content there. Meanwhile, the app’s design is fantastic and easy to find content. Typically, when you load the app, you know immediately that you’ll find something you like. Other wallpaper applications often require you to ensure the app is designed for a device with a screen resolution matching yours, or won’t be able to take advantage of the way Android’s wallpapers slide along the background when switching between apps. Backdrops is different: it takes every single good idea we’ve seen with wallpaper apps on Android and combines them into one sleek package.

Similarly, Google’s Wallpaper app we described above is excellent, excelling at curation and simplicity. Originally bundled with their first-generation Pixel phones in October 2016, Google has since made the Wallpapers app available to any Android user through the Play Store, offering most users a simple way to get some great-looking, modern wallpapers on their device. While it isn’t quite as feature-packed as an application like Backdrops, lacking user-uploaded images or a tag system, the fact remains that Google Wallpapers is still one of the best applications for any user looking for a new wallpaper without spending half their day browsing through content.

Finally, one of our newest favorite wallpapers is Paper Splash, which does a decent job avoiding the pitfalls that often hit other wallpaper apps. Paper Splash pulls directly from Unsplash while simplifying the experience and offering clean, minimalist backdrops for your phone. With no ads, a featured wallpaper each day, and a preview ability that allows you to see how the wallpaper will look with your icons, Paper Splash is the newest must-have wallpaper app for your device.

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One of the many attributes that makes Android the first choice for billions of users around the world is the ability to customize the app in a robust number of ways. From the ability to change your launcher to the option to add all sorts of crazy and unique icon designs to the screen, the ability to change the way your phone looks and feels throughout the day can’t be discounted for a certain type of phone owner. Everyone loves the feel of a new device in their hand, and with Android, you can customize your device so that it feels unique and different every single day of the week.

Does your phone work differently than this? Having trouble finding where to set lock screen wallpaper? Tell us about it below if you do!