How to Change Your Screensaver on Your iPhone (And What That Really Means)

If you've been searching for the screensaver setting on your iPhone and can't find it, you're not alone — and you're not missing something obvious. The confusion usually comes down to one thing: iPhones don't have screensavers in the traditional sense. But what they do have gives you plenty of control over how your screen looks when it's idle. Here's what's actually going on and how to customize it.

What iPhones Have Instead of a Screensaver

On a desktop computer or older TV, a screensaver was a moving image designed to prevent screen burn-in — a ghost image left behind when a static display stayed on too long. Modern smartphone screens, particularly the OLED and Super Retina XDR displays used in recent iPhones, handle this differently at the hardware level. Apple doesn't implement a traditional animated screensaver as a result.

What your iPhone does have are two related but distinct features that serve a similar purpose:

• Lock Screen wallpaper — the image (or animated display) you see when your phone is locked
• StandBy mode — a full-screen ambient display that activates when your iPhone is charging and face-up

Both are customizable, and depending on what you're actually trying to achieve, one or both of these is what you're looking for.

How to Change Your Lock Screen (The Closest Thing to a Screensaver) 🎨

Your Lock Screen is the first thing you see when you wake your iPhone. It shows the time, date, notifications, and your chosen wallpaper. Changing it is straightforward:

1. Wake your iPhone and go to the Lock Screen (don't unlock it yet)
2. Press and hold on the Lock Screen until the customization interface appears
3. Tap "Customize" to edit the current Lock Screen, or tap the "+" button to create a new one
4. Choose a wallpaper from your Photo Library, Apple's curated wallpaper collections, or options like Weather, Astronomy, or Shuffle (which rotates through your photos)
5. Tap "Add" or "Done" to save

This feature became significantly more powerful with iOS 16, which introduced the layered depth effect, custom fonts for the clock, and widgets on the Lock Screen. If you're running iOS 15 or earlier, your options are more limited — just a static image background.

Lock Screen vs. Home Screen Wallpaper

These are set together but can be different images. When you create or edit a Lock Screen, iOS gives you the option to set a paired Home Screen wallpaper at the same time. You can accept Apple's suggested version (often a blurred or tinted match) or customize it separately.

StandBy Mode: The Closest Thing to an Animated Screensaver 📱

Introduced in iOS 17, StandBy is a full-screen display mode that activates when your iPhone is:

• Charging
• Placed horizontally (landscape orientation)
• Stationary for a few seconds

In StandBy, your iPhone transforms into something much closer to what most people picture when they think "screensaver." It can show:

• Clock styles (digital, analog, world clock, solar)
• Photo albums that cycle through your images
• Widgets like weather, calendar, or battery level
• A Smart Rotate view that cycles through different displays automatically

To customize StandBy:

1. Go to Settings → StandBy
2. Make sure StandBy is toggled on
3. To customize the display itself, put your iPhone in StandBy mode (charging, horizontal) and then swipe left or right to switch between views, or swipe up or down to change styles within a view
4. Long-press on a view to enter edit mode

On iPhone models with Always-On Display (iPhone 14 Pro and later), StandBy remains visible even when the room is dim — it just dims down automatically.

Key Variables That Affect Your Options

Not every iPhone user will have the same customization experience. Several factors shape what's available to you:

What "Screensaver" Means Varies by Person

Some people asking this question want a dynamic wallpaper — a subtle animated background on the Lock Screen. Apple offers a small selection of these natively (like the color-shifting Live Wallpapers available on certain models), and photo Live Photos can also be used as Lock Screen wallpapers with subtle motion.

Others want a slideshow of photos when the phone is sitting idle — which StandBy's photo view handles well, assuming you're on iOS 17 and charging.

Still others just want to swap out the static background image, which is the simplest case and works on virtually any modern iPhone regardless of iOS version.

The right path depends on which of these scenarios actually matches what you're trying to do — and that comes down to your iPhone model, which iOS version you're running, and how you typically use your phone when it's sitting idle.