How to Change Your Lock Screen Wallpaper on Any Device

Your lock screen is the first thing you see every time you pick up your phone, open your laptop, or wake your tablet. Changing the wallpaper there is one of the simplest personalizations available — but the exact steps vary more than most people expect, depending on your device, operating system version, and even which launcher or desktop environment you're running.

What the Lock Screen Actually Is

The lock screen is the display layer that appears before you authenticate — before your PIN, password, fingerprint, or face unlock. It's distinct from your home screen (the interface you use after unlocking), though on many devices you can set the same image for both, or different images for each.

This distinction matters because some operating systems treat lock screen and home screen wallpapers as a single setting, while others give you independent control over each. Knowing which situation you're in saves you from hunting through the wrong settings menu.

How to Change Your Lock Screen Wallpaper on iPhone (iOS)

On iPhones running iOS 16 or later, Apple redesigned the lock screen customization system significantly. The process works like this:

1. Long-press on the lock screen (while the phone is locked, after face or touch authentication)
2. Tap "Customize" or the "+" button to create a new wallpaper
3. Choose from Apple's gallery, your Photos library, or featured categories like weather and astronomy
4. Crop and position your image, then tap "Add" or "Set as Wallpaper Pair"

The "Wallpaper Pair" option automatically generates a coordinated home screen background from the same image. You can choose to apply it to the lock screen only if you prefer.

On iOS 15 and earlier, the path is: Settings → Wallpaper → Choose a New Wallpaper, then select your image and confirm where you want it applied.

How to Change Your Lock Screen Wallpaper on Android

Android is more fragmented, because manufacturers layer their own interfaces — called skins — on top of base Android. The general approach works like this:

1. Go to Settings → Display → Wallpaper (or Settings → Wallpaper & Style on some versions)
2. Choose your image source — gallery, built-in wallpapers, or a wallpaper app
3. Select the image and choose "Lock screen", "Home screen", or "Both"

On Samsung Galaxy devices running One UI, you can also long-press the home screen and tap "Wallpaper and style" for quicker access. On Pixel devices with stock Android, long-pressing the home screen takes you to the wallpaper picker directly.

Some Android skins — particularly MIUI (Xiaomi), ColorOS (OPPO), and HyperOS — place wallpaper settings inside a dedicated "Themes" app rather than the standard Settings menu.

How to Change Your Lock Screen Wallpaper on Windows

On Windows 10 and Windows 11, the lock screen is controlled separately from the desktop background:

• Navigate to Settings → Personalization → Lock Screen
• Under "Personalize your lock screen", choose between Picture, Slideshow, or Windows Spotlight

Windows Spotlight is Microsoft's rotating image service — it automatically pulls in curated photography from Bing. If you want a specific image, choose Picture and browse to your file. Slideshow mode cycles through a folder of your choosing.

Note that on Windows 11, Microsoft has progressively linked the sign-in screen appearance to lock screen settings, so changes there may also affect what you see at the login prompt.

How to Change Your Lock Screen Wallpaper on macOS

macOS doesn't have a lock screen in quite the same sense — the screensaver and login window fill similar roles. To change the desktop/lock background:

• Go to System Settings → Wallpaper (macOS Ventura and later) or System Preferences → Desktop & Screen Saver (older versions)
• Select an image, and it will apply to both the desktop and the locked/login state

For the login window specifically, options are more limited. macOS uses the user's desktop wallpaper blurred as the login background by default, and granular control over that layer requires third-party tools.

Variables That Affect Your Options 🖼️

Not every device gives you the same level of control. Several factors shape what's actually possible:

When Wallpaper Changes Don't Stick

A common frustration: you set a new lock screen image and it reverts. This usually happens because of Mobile Device Management (MDM) profiles on corporate or education devices, or because a wallpaper app is actively overriding your manual selection. On Android specifically, some third-party launcher apps maintain their own wallpaper settings that conflict with system-level changes.

Animated and Dynamic Lock Screen Wallpapers 🎨

Both iOS and Android support dynamic or animated lock screens under specific conditions:

• iOS: Live Photos can animate on the lock screen; depth-effect wallpapers use portrait mode images to create a layered parallax effect
• Android: Some manufacturers (Samsung, in particular) support video wallpapers and animated themes through their Theme stores
• Windows: Third-party apps like Lively Wallpaper enable animated or interactive backgrounds, though these typically apply to the desktop rather than the strict lock screen layer

The degree to which animation is supported — and how much battery it consumes — varies considerably by device hardware and OS version.

The Part That Depends on Your Setup

The mechanical steps above cover most devices, but the right approach for you depends on details only you can confirm: which OS version your device is actually running, whether it's managed by an employer or school, whether you're working with stock software or a heavily customized manufacturer skin, and what kind of image or animation you're trying to use. Those specifics are what determine whether the standard path works, or whether you'll need to dig into a theme app, check MDM restrictions, or verify format compatibility first.