Every phone or tablet comes with a selection of wallpapers — images for your home screen or lock screen background that give your device a bit of personality. However, oftentimes those wallpapers don't reflect your personality. We're here to change that. Whether you want to dive head-first into theming your Android phone or just want a cool wallpaper to match your boss Pixel 5 case, there's a dope wallpaper out there for everyone, so long as you know where to look.
This is where you can find the best wallpapers for your Android phone or tablet!
Google Wallpapers
Google got into the Wallpaper game almost five years ago with their Wallpapers app, which launched with the Google Pixel and keeps growing every day. Wallpapers has a wide selection from satellite imagery to architecture to patterns to the wonderful beauty of nature. You can even choose to have Google mix up your wallpapers every day if you're so inclined!
Google Wallpapers
A wide array of wallpaper collections, available for all Android phones but with a few exclusives available for Google Pixel phones.
Tapet
Rather than being a gallery of pre-made wallpapers, Tapet is a wallpaper generator that can make you a unique one-of-a-kind wallpaper in hundreds of designs and color palettes. Many of the patterns are behind the Premium paywall, but there's plenty to work with while you give it a try. For those of us who like to match our phone to our wardrobes or cases — yes, I'm a freak, I know — this app lets you build a wallpaper that matches perfectly and looks beautiful.
Tapet
Create unique wallpapers with custom color palettes without wasting hours in Photoshop with this easy-to-use wallpaper generator app.
WalliPop Wallpapers
WalliPop is a newcomer on the wallpaper scene, but I'm in love with the art style used in most of its wallpapers. From landscapes and natural scenes to superheroes and abstract designs, there's a wallpaper here for everyone. If you like to tweak your widgets or icon packs to match your wallpaper, WalliPop gives you hex codes for colors used in the wallpaper so you can perfectly match the rest of your home screen to your new wallpaper.
WalliPop Wallpapers
With a wide variety of styles and multiple color palettes for each wallpaper design with WalliPop. It's not as cluttered as Backdrops, so it's easier to try and find something you like.
Backdrops
Backdrops is a massive wallpaper app that features hundreds upon hundreds of wallpapers from artists all around the world. Backdrops has a "Wall of the Day" feature, but some of its best walls are available in paid, premium collections. Whether you're looking for something modern, something natural, or something completely new, Backdrops has some of the best wallpapers around, and you should give it a peek.
Backdrops
This is the wallpaper app most of my colleagues use for wallpapers because it's easy to find something new and high quality without getting sucked down the artistic rabbit hole.
The "front page of the internet" is a place where you can find a great many things, both wonderful and horrifying, but one of the best things I find on Reddit are not cute cat videos but breathtaking wallpapers. Many subreddits are devoted to wallpaper and professional-grade photography. There is a subreddit for just about every interest under the sun, meaning that if a wallpaper exists for it, chances are you can find one here, especially when it comes to sports teams. Here are some subs to start your search:
- /r/Amoledbackgrounds/ — This subreddit is all about those uber-dark wallpapers that only light up a few pixels of an AMOLED screen because those beautiful blacks mean less wasted battery (however small a gain it may be).
- /r/EarthPorn/ — There's nothing smutty about this sub; it's just the de facto spot to find shockingly good photography of our beautiful planet. I can't go into this sub without coming out with 2-3 new wallpapers.
- /r/food — Hunting here will make you hungry, but you know what? It's a worthy sacrifice to get a drool-worthy wallpaper, and it'll maybe encourage you to cook more!
- /r/androidthemes — This sub is where themers way more hardcore than me come to share their awesome creations. There are a lot of custom themes here you can download and plenty of straight wallpapers as well.
DeviantArt
DeviantArt is one of the biggest and most diverse online art communities on the internet. As such, it is an incredible place to go and search for a wallpaper for anything and everything under the sun. When I'm building an Android theme, the DeviantArt app is usually where I start. Just remember that while DeviantArt has millions and millions of amazing wallpapers, it also has millions and millions of "deviant" art pieces, if you get my drift. Please search responsibly.
DeviantArt
Find amazing photography, wonderful digital paintings, and fanart of every shape and size in DeviantArt's massive community of artists and art-lovers.
Glitch Vibes
If you have a particular taste for your wallpapers, designer L. Marco Miranda has a great and growing collection of wallpapers geared towards the blurred line between corruption and composition that is Glitch Vibes. You can get access to the collection through Patreon — yes, these are paid wallpapers because you should support the art and artists you enjoy — and there's even animated wallpapers included for the top tier. As a note, not all phone support .mp4 animated wallpapers, but if yours does, these look trippy and pair excellently with the best icon packs like Unicorn, Ombre, and Icon Pack Studio.
Glitch Vibes by L. Marco Miranda
Grab static or animated wallpapers for mobile and desktop that give off that retro-futuristic vibe that only glitchy artwork can. It may look half-corrupted, but it's all-awesome.
Muzei
Muzei wants to mix up your wallpaper a little more often than just daily, allowing you to see a new wallpaper on your phone every few minutes if you so desire. Muzei's many plugins also allow you to pull your prospective wallpapers from thousands of unique and curated sources, ensuring you'll love whatever wallpaper Muzei picks. Plus, if you don't like the current wallpaper, you can set a Quick Settings tile to skip to the next wallpaper.
Muzei
Swap your wallpaper daily or hourly with collections that can draw from famous art or the latest fanart with Muzei's myriad of plugins.
Our wallpaper roundups
Every now and again, we endeavor to bring you the best of the best wallpapers from all across the internet — many of them from DeviantArt — and sometimes beyond, if need be! Our wallpaper roundups offer backgrounds for everything from anime to nature to art to science for your wallpaper needs.
If you have a Galaxy S10 series or Note 10 series phone, we've also got Hole Punch wallpaper roundups that turn that black circle into high art.
- These are the best Galaxy S10 and S10+ Hole-Punch Wallpapers
- Best Hole Punch Wallpapers for the Note 10 and 10+
Your turn!
What are your favorite places to find wallpapers? Maybe you have an app you love or an artist whose work you cherish? Leave us a comment down below!
Updated December 2020: This article was updated with some of the latest apps for finding the best wallpapers to go with that awesome new phone you're getting for Christmas.
