How to make a live wallpaper? - Basicknowledgehub

Making anything live means giving life to a particular object. Not sure how you can make a live wallpaper for your device? We got you covered in our article, see what are they. Learn how you can set those on your Android or Windows device as well. And see how to make live wallpapers from your videos with and without third-party apps. If you want to read more useful articles then check out our page.

What is live wallpaper?

We all know about wallpaper on our laptops and PCs which we use in our daily life. Normal wallpapers are static and do not change until we replace them with others. This is not a problem for many people since they do not tend to notice what wallpaper they are using. But if you are a gamer or content creator or doing creative work in general then you are going to notice. Lucky for us, live wallpapers are the answer to our question.

Live wallpaper is not static and changes slightly over time, this gives us the feeling of a moving image. Some small elements move in the image such as grass or trees. You can also understand it as a gif but with high quality and more subtle moments. If you want to see how live wallpapers look then you can visit any website or see any video for a demo. Some Android phones have to default live wallpapers, you can look for them in your default wallpapers.

However, you should keep in mind that these wallpapers consume CPU resources and battery life. If you are using a powerful PC (above i3) then you should not worry about them. But if you are using your laptop, then the battery life would be affected and you will not notice the cause.

Another problem which we are going to face is that most of the programs we will use for live wallpapers will be paid for. And even if they are not paid, then also a third-party software will run in the background. If you close the program then the live wallpaper will be closed and the normal static wallpaper will be shown. This is a huge downside for many people since they do not want any software running in the background continuously. This will be a significant problem if you are gaming. Since some CPU resources will be occupied by the live wallpapers and you will notice some frame drops in the game.

We would recommend you turn off the live wallpaper if you are doing any CPU-intensive work or not going to see it for the majority of the time.

How to Get and Use Live Wallpaper

Here we are going to see how we can set live wallpaper on Android and Windows devices. If you want to make your live wallpapers then skip to the next section.

We can easily set live wallpaper on any device since there are multiple apps available for it. We will be looking at some apps, but you can use any app which you want to use. The steps will not vary a lot and the result will be the same. Follow the steps to set it:

For Android:

Open your Android smartphone and head over to “Settings”.
Now look for “Display” and tap on it.
Under display look for “Advanced” and tap on it.
Here you should be able to see the option for “Wallpaper” and after opening it you will see “Live Wallpaper”.

Open “Play Store” and search for “Live wallpaper apps”.
Download any app which you like and wait for it to be downloaded.
Open the app and select the live wallpapers you like and then click on “Set Wallpaper”.
The app will automatically set the live wallpaper and you don’t have to do anything.

For Windows:

Open “Microsoft Store” and search for a live wallpaper app, download any app which you like.
Wait for the app to be downloaded on your system.
Now you can open the app and follow the on-screen instructions. The steps will vary from app to app, this is why we will not be going in-depth.
Select the wallpaper which you like and click on “Set wallpaper”, the original wallpaper may go black. Now you can enjoy your new live wallpapers.

Alternative for Windows:

If you are a Windows user then you have an alternative available, instead of using live wallpaper with third-party apps. We can use the slideshow feature provided by Microsoft windows. Slideshow is a collection of wallpapers that you can set to change after a set time. With this, we can tell Windows to pick any random wallpaper from a folder and keep changing them.

Follow the steps to set the slideshow :

Open your Windows system and go to the home page, right-click there and click on “Personalise” from the pop-up menu.
Once the Personalization window opens, click on “Background” and you should see “Personalize your background”.
On the right side of it, you should see “Picture”, click on it and you should see a drop-down menu.
From the menu click on “Slideshow” and then click “Browse” beside the “Choose a picture album for a slideshow”.
Now simply look for the folder with all the wallpapers and click “Select this folder”.
The wallpaper should change after the default time, you can change time from the same settings as the previous step.

How to Turn a Video into Live Wallpaper

In the earlier sections we have seen how to use the already made live wallpapers, but what about custom live wallpaper? Here we are going to see different ways in which we can make a live wallpaper from any video. We will see how we can make it for Windows as well as Android devices.

How to Set a Video as Live Wallpaper on Android?

Many devices will not have support for this, so we may have to use a third-party app to achieve the same. Follow the steps to achieve the same without third-party application:

Open “Gallary” on your smartphone and open any video file which you want to set as live wallpaper.
Once you open the video, tap on the three dots at the top of the screen and wait for the drop-down menu to open.
From the menu tap on “Set as wallpaper”. If the option is not available then we need to use a third-party app.
Tap on Set as wallpaper and then on “Lock screen”, you will be taken to a video editor. From here you can trim the video and keep the part that you like.
Once you are done with editing, tap on “Trim” and your live wallpaper should be set in no time.

If your phone has a “themes app” pre-installed like Xiaomi phones.
Now go to the home screen of the app and go to the “Wallpaper” section.
Under wallpapers, look for “Live wallpaper” and open it.
From here we can click on the “Add icon” or the “+ icon”, and select any video file you like. If you are not able to see this option then we may need to download a third-party app.
Once you select the video, you will be taken to a video editor and tap on “trim” once you are done with editing.

Best Video Live Wallpaper Apps

If the previous section was not working for you then we will have to download a third-party app and use it to create a live wallpaper. Here are some of the apps which you should try out.

NOTE: The feature of creating live wallpaper can be removed in the future or by the time you are reading it. So before downloading the app, check the description section to see if the feature is still present.

Video live wallpaper

This is a free app for all to download from the Playstore, but you will get Ads in the app. You can choose to buy the Ad-free version of the app but most of the features will be the same.

Download the app from here and wait for it to be downloaded. Open the app and tap on “Gallery“. Once it opens, look for the video you want to use we live wallpaper and tap on “Set live wallpaper“. Now edit the video and tap on “Preview” to see the wallpaper. The app also has support to change the aspect ratio which helps adjust the video according to your screen.

VideoWall

This is another free app that will help you create your live wallpapers. Click here to download the app from the Play Store, wait for it to be downloaded. Once the app is installed, open it and select any video which you want to convert into a live wallpaper. The steps will be similar to the previous app. Now you can set it on your Android device with ease.

How to Set a Landscape Video as Live Wallpaper on Android

With the above apps, you can only set a portrait video as your wallpaper. You will find issues with landscape orientation videos, as the apps will stretch them to fit your screen.

If you want to use a landscape video as live wallpaper without stretching, you will need to convert the landscape video to portrait orientation. Third-party applications can assist with this. One of the most pleasing apps to operate is the InShot app.

Open the InShot app after installing it. Load your landscape video in the app. Tap on the Canvas tab. Choose 9:16 orientation and hit the Checkmark icon.

The app will automatically keep a background color for the space. If you want to change the background color, tap on the Background option and choose a background color or blur of your choice. Tap the Checkmark icon.

Finally, thump on the Save button to download the video to your smartphone. Once downloaded, set it as your wallpaper as described in the portrait video section above.

Summary

In the article, we learned what is a live wallpaper and how it’s different from the static wallpapers which we use normally. After that, we saw how to set the live wallpaper on Android and Windows devices. We discussed the downsides of using such an item and what is an alternative for Windows devices.

If your device does not support features to make live wallpaper from videos then third-party apps are the only solution. We have included some apps which are good for making live wallpapers without much hassle.