5 wallpaper apps you can use without a paid subscription

Being able to customize your phone is important, and while Android and iOS are offering better and better ways to change the look of a new phone as soon as you get it, one of the biggest ways to immediately improve the look of an iPhone, Pixel, or Galaxy phone is still a new wallpaper.

Much like taking your smartphone out of its case, a wallpaper can radically change how you feel about your device. It’s the visual you see almost every time you unlock your device, it’s only natural it would have an impact. There’s now more than a few price-y ways to get stylish wallpapers on your phone, but if you’re willing to deal with some ads, you can still get great, high-quality backgrounds without having to spend an arm and a leg for images you won’t actually use.

Here’s some of the best apps we’ve found for getting free wallpapers for your smartphone, tablet, or computer.

1 Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones

Once you sort through the AI fluff, there’s some solid options

Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones

Zedge Wallpapers & Ringtones includes a wide variety of backgrounds and ringtones that you can download for free, along with a AI image generator you can use to create a background based on one of your own photos.

Zedge offers not only wallpapers but also ringtones to customize your phone with. The app is available for iOS and Android, and uses a credit system to limit how many wallpapers you download. A new background typically starts around 10 credits, and you earn more by watching 30-second ads. It’s annoying, but Zedge’s real advantage is the wide variety of wallpapers it offers, including some that are animated, if your operating system supports it.

The ads can be annoying (you can remove them with a paid subscription) and you’ll have to filter through some clearly AI-generated art that floats to the top of certain search terms (it doesn’t help that the Zedge app has a built-in AI image generator), but if you can look past those you’ll have an excellent selection of images to choose from, ranging from landscapes to popular characters from pop culture.

2 Unsplash

It’s like a Flickr for high-contrast wallpapers

Unsplash

Unsplash is a Flickr-esque collection of excellent, free-to-use photos that make great backgrounds for a smartphone or tablet. If you want to upload your own photos, you can do it from the app too.

If you’re interested in photography in particular, Unsplash offers a library of high-quality (and often, very high-contrast) photos that look great on a bright smartphone or tablet screen. While not every image Unsplash hosts makes for an excellent background, now that both iOS and Android — as of iOS 18 — offer you fine-tuned control over where app icons are placed on your wallpaper, you should be able to make everything work.

Key to Unsplash’s appeal is that it’s an open library of photos. The creators of images are clearly credited and everything in the app is free to download and use. The only thing that requires an account is uploading your own photos to Unsplash or, if you want to subscribe to Unsplash+ and use photos from Unsplash in your own professional work, much like the OG photo-sharing service, Flickr. Please note that what you’ll find in the wallpaper section of Unsplash is more curated and slower to update than some other apps, and Unsplash also isn’t available on Android (though you can still download images directly from the Unsplash website).

3 Walli

A nice selection with 4K downloads and Apple Watch support

Walli

The Walli app has a huge number of wallpapers available to download in a variety of resolutions, along with custom Apple Watch versions too.

Walli, much like Zedge, has a large selection of wallpapers available in HD and 4K resolutions, covering everything from more subtle, abstract patterns to dramatic edits of Cristiano Ronaldo. You’ll have to watch ads to download nearly everything in the Walli app unless you’re willing to sign up for a paid subscription. Some wallpapers are only available to subscribers as well.

What makes Walli stand out in my book is its support for the Apple Watch. Many of the wallpapers on the app have custom Apple Watch versions specifically designed to work with the photo watch face. That’s a nice plus if you want to customize more than just your phone.

4 Backdrops

A crop of colorful illustrations with a few photos

Backdrops

Backdrops has an excellent selection of colorful illustrations and photos that make for great backgrounds for a smartphone or tablet.

Backdrops is the inverse of Unsplash, with a focus on illustrations and graphic-design-driven wallpapers over pure photography (though there are a few choice photo selections, too). The app offers multiple collections that are for paid Pro subscribers only, but there are still plenty of fun backgrounds available for free, including a rotating wallpaper of the day that’s refreshed regularly.

You don’t have to rely on Backdrops’ curatorial eye if you don’t want to, the app lets you search through images using broad categories like “abstract” or “Food,” along with individual tags, and specific colors. If you only want to see wallpapers that will match your bright blue “Ultramarine” iPhone 16, you can do that pretty easily.

5 Reddit

The ultimate tool for crowdsourcing unique images

Reddit

Reddit is best known as a social app, but there are multiple dedicated threads with instructional information, and even wallpapers you can use for your devices.

While it’s probably best known as the home for some of the most inane, hyper-specific conversations on the internet, Reddit is a surprisingly great source for unique wallpapers, whether it’s for your desktop computer, Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 6, or an M4 iPad Pro. There’s more general wallpaper subreddits like r/wallpaper and r/wallpapers with thousands and, some case, millions of members sourcing backgrounds and wallpapers and more specialized subreddits like r/iphonewallpapers if you’re looking for something for a specific device.

Now, your taste might not be the same as a random redditor — the wallpaper threads that are the most popular weren’t always to mine taste — but these are communities, meaning if you don’t see what you like, there’s a good chance someone has asked what you’re looking for before, or someone will be willing to help if you ask politely in a thread of your own.

You don’t have to pay a subscription to redecorate your favorite devices

No matter how good a YouTube video makes it look, not everyone is going to be able or willing to pay a monthly fee to get high resolution wallpapers for their phone, regardless of the YouTuber associated with them. These apps should get you a head start on finding alternative options for free, provided you’re willing to watch some ads.

We’ve got articles offering more inspiration and guidance on how to customize everything from your iPhone to the Google Chrome browser, but in the meantime, try downloading a few wallpapers and play with how you want your smartphone to look.