Switch your iPhone wallpaper with a single tap

In just a few minutes, you can create a cool iPhone Lock Screen wallpaper that can switch between two images with just a tap. Add the right images to your photo library, and you can toggle between them like magic.

For instance, you might pair up nearly identical photos of a muscle car with and without its headlights on. That way, when you tap your iPhone screen, the car’s lights flash on or off. Or maybe you take duplicate photos of your boss and add fiery red laser eyes to one of them so you can tap between “nice boss” and “boss from hell.”

To pull off this fun iPhone wallpaper trick, you need to add the right kinds of images to your photo library — I’ll share a few examples — and then create a custom Photo Shuffle wallpaper to toggle between them. Watch the video or keep reading below.

How to create a switching wallpaper on iPhone

These days, iPhone Lock Screens are endlessly customizable. The stock Photo wallpaper utilized in this trick proves incredibly popular — and Apple’s intelligent Photo Shuffle feature can surface great (and often long-forgotten) shots from the depths of your photo library. But creating your own manual Photo Shuffle using specially chosen (and maybe edited) images can achieve an awesome toggling effect.

Table of contents: How to create a switching wallpaper on iPhone

1. Add two (or more) alternating images to your photo library
2. Create a “Photo Shuffle” Lock Screen
3. Select your images
4. Create another toggling Lock Screen
5. More tips on customizing your iPhone

Add two (or more) alternating images to your photo library

First, you need the right images to switch between in your photo library. This is the trickiest step. In all the examples, I used matched pairs of images, but you can use more if you like. The effect works best if the images are already in the exact size and orientation you need, like the ones I’ve provided.

I’ve put together a few pairs for you to download into your photo library:

Of course, you can use any two (or more) images you like. However, if you need to crop or resize the images, it can be tricky to line them up exactly. Do a sloppy job, and that can take away from the toggle effect.

Create a Photo Shuffle Lock Screen

Next, go to Settings > Wallpaper and tap Add New Wallpaper. In the row of options along the top, tap Photo Shuffle.

Select your images

By default, Photo Shuffle rotates through several intelligently chosen images from a few different categories. Instead, you’ll tap Select Photos Manually at the bottom. Then, tap All to see your whole library. Tap to select the images you want to alternate between in your new Photo Shuffle Lock Screen.

Make sure you tap ⋯ and set Shuffle Frequency to On Tap.

Next, you can customize the new Photo Shuffle Lock Screen you just set up. You can add widgets above or below the clock. You also can add a filter to the images by swiping left and right through the different options. Tap Add in the upper right to create your new toggling wallpaper.

Create another toggling Lock Screen

You can tap Add New Wallpaper again to create another Lock Screen with two other images. Follow the same procedure to switch your iPhone wallpaper. Create a Photo Shuffle, tap Select Photos Manually, pick the two you want, then tap Add.

To switch between Lock Screens, tap and hold on the Lock Screen, then swipe left and right.

More tips on customizing your iPhone

You can read more about how you can customize your Lock Screen here, along with other ways to customize your iPhone: