What you need to know
- Action Launcher developer Chris Lacy has a new live wallpaper app out called SwirlWalls.
- SwirlWalls is a paid live wallpaper app that features dozens of high-definition wallpapers that move when you interact with them.
- You can spin the wallpaper with your finger or by flicking your phone side to side.
- The app is $5 upfront, rather than a subscription or a supporter model, which is what Action Launcher uses.
When it comes to theming and making your Android phone unique and beautiful, Chris Lacy has been a man worth knowing for the last several years. As the developer of Action Launcher, one of the best Android launchers, Lacy has always pushed the envelope of what a home screen can and should be, and now he's bringing that expertise to his first new app in years: SwirlWalls.
SwirlWalls is a live wallpaper app that allows you to interact with a customize your experience to produce a fun experience on whichever launcher you call home. You can tap and swipe to move your swirling background — of which there are hundreds of variants in ten different styles — and additionally you can flick your phone to the left or right to make it swirl, too, which has been ridiculously fun on my home screen the last day or so as I've tested it.
There are both normal and dark versions in each style, allowing the app to automatically change to a dark wallpaper when your phone's Dark theme is turned on for phones running Android 10 or later. You can customize the dimming of the wallpaper, the tinting around the status and navigation bars, how swirly the wallpaper is when you interact with it — I turned it up so it spins more when I swipe or flick it — and you can adjust what the two-finger and three-finger gestures do with the wallpaper, though that may interfere with some launchers that already have two-finger gestures.
If you're wanting to give SwirlWalls a try, the app is $5, which seems steep for a wallpaper app, but it is a really fun and very advanced wallpaper app. Lacy mentions in his announcement post and in the app's Google Play listing that there's a refund window for apps if you try it and don't like it, but I found it strangely addictive.
SwirlWalls: Interactive UHD Wallpaper
Round and round your psychedelic wallpaper goes. Pick from hundreds of walls, swipe and flick them to spin the swirls, and you can have it dynamically follow your phone's dark theme.
Ara Wagoner was a staff writer at Android Central. She themes phones and pokes YouTube Music with a stick. When she's not writing about cases, Chromebooks, or customization, she's wandering around Walt Disney World. If you see her without headphones, RUN. You can follow her on Twitter at @arawagco.
