When it comes to the personalization of a device, the wallpaper comes first. It shows, at a glance, a person’s tastes, beliefs and, maybe, character. Your choice of a wallpaper is as good and definitive as your choice of clothes as you step out of the house in the morning.
While it shouldn’t be hard to get a half-decent wallpaper – every device comes with a couple of nice wallpapers – there are apps that exist to make the process painless and effortless. Like these ones:
1. Muzei Live Wallpaper
Roman Nurik’s solo effort has been a blessing to the Android platform ever since it arrived 3 years ago.
If you don’t know him, Nurik is the developer behind Dashclock, a popular widget we used to swear by 4 years ago. It made using my Galaxy S4 back then, a real pleasure. So, little wonder that the brains behind such were able to come up with a hit wallpaper app. And not just any other wallpaper app, a live wallpaper app.
Android has had live wallpapers for so long. Long before Apple made the parallax effect on wallpapers a cool thing. But they’ve always sucked in one way or the other. When they don’t suck, they drain all system resources since they are almost always “live” – running.
Muzei is none of that. The live wallpaper app, by default, gives a breath of fresh air to your device’s home screen every morning with a new work of art. It is even humble enough to take a back seat and let your app icons and widgets pop by blurring and dimming the artwork. In case ancient paintings (and Picasso) are not your thing, you can invoke the help of Canadian photography marketplace 500px or the world’s largest gathering of nagging nerds, Reddit or your own photo gallery for your wallpaper needs. Muzei lets you do that, easily. It has many extensions to, well, extend its capabilities.
2. Backdrops
This is the best wallpaper app on the Play Store, end of story. Go try it out.
3. Wallpapers (by Google)
This one is relatively new having debuted late last year on the Google Pixel phones where it was exclusively available with the Pixel launcher.
Other than the fact that it’s made by Google, Wallpapers is not a special app. It has a couple of cool wallpapers and it also lets users set any other images on their device as wallpapers. I do like its “Daily wallpaper” feature and the “Art” section that was added in a recent update is something that most will likely fall in love with.
4. Tapet
If you attend a motivational class or listen to a motivational speaker, you are likely to hear this line: you can be anything you set your mind to be. It’s become a cliche, I know, but that’s exactly what Tapet is to its users. You can just create anything you wish with it. You just need to open your mind and love colours. That’s it.
5. ZEDGE
ZEDGE is the father of all customization apps on the Play Store. It has been around for much longer than the other apps on this list. For those of us who used to swear by Nokia phones back in the day, Zedge’s portal used to be our second home after Waptrick (remember it?). Nearly a decade later, I still enjoy visiting ZEDGE to get my fix of free high-quality Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Lamborghini Huracan wallpapers.
Note: all apps mentioned in this article are available for free on the Google Play Store. However, some of them, like Backdrops and Tapet, have optional premium tiers that offer a couple of more features.
Where do you get your wallpapers from?
