How to set a live wallpaper on Android

A normal wallpaper is an image. A live one is drawn by an app while your home screen is showing, so it can move, change with the time, or react when you tilt or tap the phone. It isn't a video on a loop either: each frame is drawn on the phone.

Lumen - Live Wallpapers is free on Google Play and needs Android 8.0 or newer. It comes with ten scenes, and all of them are in the app when you install it, so nothing downloads later.

The preview screen belongs to Android, not to the app. That's why it looks a little different from phone to phone, and why every live wallpaper app sends you through it: an app isn't allowed to switch you to a live wallpaper without you confirming it there.

• Install Lumen from Google Play and open it.
• Pick a scene from the gallery to see it full size.
• Tap Set as wallpaper. Android's own preview screen opens with the scene running.
• Tap the button on that screen to confirm. Its wording depends on your phone, and some phones ask whether you want it on the home screen only or on the lock screen too.
• Go back to your home screen. The app's gallery now tells you which scene is your wallpaper.

A few phones don't have the screen apps use to hand you a live wallpaper. Lumen tells you when that happens. You can still set it from the phone's own settings: on most phones, press and hold an empty part of the home screen, open the wallpaper option, find the list of live wallpapers and choose Lumen.

Some phones, usually work phones, aren't allowed to change the wallpaper at all. Lumen says so too, and there's nothing the app can do about that one.

Six of Lumen's scenes follow the sun. In Ridgeline, Sakura Drift and Vale in Bloom the sun comes up and goes down at about the same time it does outside, and Lantern Festival's lanterns glow brighter at night. The app never asks where you are: it works the sun out from your phone's time zone.

Orrery shows the planets where they actually are today, and Orrery and Circuit Horizon both follow your clock. All ten scenes move a little when you tilt the phone, and Lantern Garden and Koi Still ripple where you tap.

A live wallpaper only costs battery while it's being drawn, so the question is how often it draws. Most of Lumen's scenes run at 10 frames a second, and Aurora Shore and Circuit Horizon at 3. They go up to 30 only while you tilt or tap.

With the screen off, or another app in front, it doesn't draw at all. At 15% battery it switches to a still picture, and it starts moving again once you're back at 20%.

To change scenes, open Lumen, pick another one and set it the same way. To go back to a normal wallpaper, choose any picture in your phone's wallpaper settings. If you uninstall the app, Android puts a default wallpaper back by itself.

Lumen has no account, no ads and nothing to buy, and it can't go online: it doesn't have Android's internet permission, so the phone won't let it open a connection.

It’s free on Google Play. All ten scenes, and how each one moves, are on the Lumen page.

More guides