There comes a time in every smartphone user’s life when they just love two different wallpapers. It’s a tough bridge to cross—which one takes precedence? How can you decide? It’s rough, man. There’s a clear answer here: put one on the lock screen and one on the home screen.
The thing is, if you’ve been using a stock Android device, that was a thing that couldn’t happen. You got one wallpaper, and that’s it. Bummer.
Separate lock and home screen wallpapers have been something most third-party Android manufacturers have supported for a while. with the release of Android 7.0 Nougat, however, you can finally live your dream of having two different wallpapers on the lock and home screens. Setting it up is pretty simple, with the only caveat being that it currently only works with the Google Now Launcher. This is the stock launcher on Nexus devices, so if you haven’t jumped ship to another one, then you’re already ready already.
If you are currently on a different launcher—like the awesome Nova Launcher, for example—don’t stress. You’ll just need to change the default launcher back to the Google Now Launcher, set your wallpapers, then you can move back to Nova. The new wallpapers will still stick after the launcher change, so it’s really just a few more steps.
So, assuming you’ve already changed back to the Google Now Launcher as your default, let’s do this.
The first thing you’ll need to do is long-press on the home screen, which will open the launcher’s options menu. Then tap on “Wallpapers.”
With the Wallpapers menu open, scroll through and find the one you’d like to set—you can do either the lock screen or home screen first; it doesn’t matter. If the wallpaper you want isn’t in the scrolling list, you can tap the “My photos” button to add an image from the device’s internal storage. Once you’ve selected the image, tap it and then press the “Set wallpaper” button in the top left.
A dialog will open asking if you want to set it as the Home screen wall, Lock screen wall, or both. Go ahead and pick whichever one you’re setting.
Once the wallpaper has been set, it’ll toss you back into the home screen. Just repeat the same process to set the other wallpaper, and you’re done. So simple.
If you changed launchers in order to set the wallpapers, you can go back to your launcher of choice once both preferred wallpapers have been set. Enjoy.