How to change iPhone or iPad wallpaper at regular intervals automatically

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to have your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen and Home Screen wallpaper change every hour, every day, every time you unlock your phone, or whenever you tap the screen.

Photo Shuffle wallpaper on iPhone

Even with beautiful images saved to the Photos app, manually changing the wallpaper on a regular basis seems like a chore. This is where the built-in Photo Shuffle feature shines. It ensures you can enjoy all the beautiful pictures on your Lock Screen without manual intervention.

Photo Shuffle takes the boring out of wallpaper and helps you spice up the appearance with fresh, dynamic images at regular intervals.

You can use Photo Shuffle to cycle through photos of your favorite people, pets, nature, cities, and more. Alternatively, you can select a photo album, which I absolutely love because I already have an album of awesome wallpapers downloaded from iDB and the X (Twitter) app.

Use Photos Shuffle wallpaper for your iPhone or iPad Lock Screen and Home Screen

1) Open the Settings app and tap Wallpaper, followed by Add New Wallpaper.

Alternatively, you can touch and hold your unlocked Lock Screen or Notification Center and tap the blue plus button.

2) Select Photo Shuffle from the top.

Add new Photo Shuffle wallpaper on iPhone

3) Now, you have to pick the wallpapers you want to use.

Options like People, Pets, Nature, Cities, etc., may already be selected, provided you have those images in your photo library. If not, you won’t see these options.

If you want to use people’s pictures as the wallpaper, you have the option to select one or more persons. To do that, tap 1 Person, then select one or more people from your library, and hit Done.

Similarly, you can select or unselect Nature, Pets, Cities, etc. As you make your choice, the wallpaper bundle preview at the top will change accordingly.

If you have an album full of favorite pictures, select the Album option and tap the current album to pick another.

Use Featured Photos or Use Album for photo shuffle on iPhone

Important: In my repeated tests, I found that even if I select an album with hundreds of images, just the 16 pictures from that album seem to work in Photo Shuffle mode.

4) With photos selected, bring your focus to the Shuffle Frequency section and choose one of the options:

  • On Tap: The wallpaper will change every time you tap the locked or unlocked Lock Screen or Notification Center. I love this.
  • On Lock: You will see a new Lock Screen and Home Screen wallpaper every time you wake up your iPhone by raising it, with a tap on the screen, or with a press of the side button.
  • Hourly: The wallpaper changes every hour.
  • Daily: You have a new picture as the wallpaper every day.

5) With the image bundle and shuffle frequency set, you can now tap the big blue Use Featured Photos or Use Album button.

Pick Shuffle Frequency for Photo Shuffle wallpaper on iPhone and add it

Alternatively, if you tap Select Photos Manually, you will have to pick the pictures individually from your Camera Roll. Tap All and Collections to see everything. Remember that if you opt for this, the selections you made in Step 3 above will be overridden. You should choose this option only if you don’t want to go with People, Nature, Pets, Cities, or Album options.

Select Photos Manually for Photo Shuffle on iPhone

6) Finally, you will get to the Lock Screen preview pane.

You can tap the screen to preview it. When you tap, the photos will shuffle, irrespective of your selected shuffle frequency.

Furthermore, you can make the usual adjustments here, like repositioning the image, picking a color style, disabling the depth effect, adding widgets, replacing or removing the flashlight and camera icons, etc.

With everything in order, tap the Add button from the top right, followed by Add Wallpaper Pair.

Edit your Photo Shuffle wallpaper

You can repeat the above steps and add another set of Photo Shuffle wallpapers or edit the current one.

1) Head to iPhone or iPad Settings > Wallpaper and tap Customize in the Lock Screen tile.

2) Tap the folder-like icon on the left side to select another category or album based on what you had initially selected.

3) Next, tap the three dots icon to change the shuffle frequency.

4) With changes made, tap Done from the top.

Editing Photo Shuffle wallpaper on iPhone

Delete the Photos Shuffle wallpaper

The steps for this are similar to other Lock Screens.

1) Touch and hold your unlocked iPhone Lock Screen.

2) Swipe up on the Photo Shuffle wallpaper and tap the red trash icon, followed by Delete This Wallpaper.

3) Select another wallpaper to exit editing mode.

Delete Photo Shuffle wallpaper on iPhone

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