How to Change the Wallpaper on Your iPhone or iPad

Changing the wallpaper on your iPhone or iPad is a simple way to breathe new life into your mobile device. Here’s how to change the wallpaper on your iPhone or iPad and make it feel like a new device again.

There are a couple of methods for changing your wallpaper. You can either choose a wallpaper from iOS’s bank of default wallpapers that come with the device–which is actually pretty good–or you can use your own wallpaper from the internet or your camera roll. We’ll show you how to do both.

First off, though, if you want to create your own wallpaper (either in Photoshop or just cropping a photo), here are the wallpaper dimensions for each device:

iPhone 4/4s: 960 x 640
iPhone 5/5s/5c/SE: 1136 x 640
iPhone 6/6s: 1334 x 750
iPhone 6/6s Plus: 1920 x 1080
iPad 1/2/Mini: 1024 x 768
iPad 3/4/Air/Air 2/Pro 9.7″/Mini 2/ Mini 3/Mini 4: 2048 x 1536
iPad Pro 12.9″: 2732 x 2048

One thing to keep in mind is that if you have the 3D “parallax” effect enabled on your iPhone or iPad, the wallpaper dimensions will need to be tad larger to make up for the space that moves around while you use your device. We have a great guide that takes you through the process of creating parallax wallpapers, as well as what dimensions they need to be.

With that said, to change the wallpaper on your iOS device, first open up the “Settings” app on the home screen.

Scroll down and tap on “Wallpaper”.

Select “Choose a New Wallpaper”.

From here, you’ll have those two options to choose from: use a default wallpaper that Apple provides, or use a photo from your camera roll.

If you choose to use a default wallpaper, you can decide between “Dynamic” or “Stills” wallpapers. Dynamic wallpapers include motion, while Stills are stationary.