How to Resize a Picture for iPhone Wallpaper

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You can use any photo stored on your iPhone as wallpaper.
Image Credit: ViewApart/iStock/GettyImages

Setting your favorite photo as your iPhone wallpaper means you can enjoy the image every time you use the phone. The iPhone wallpaper size is fairly specific, and making edits and adjustments to some photos may be necessary to fit the screen. The process is intuitive, and basic adjustments to the wallpaper settings or the photo make for an easy fit.

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Choose Your Photo First

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Before making any adjustments to screen settings, find the perfect photo. Ideally, the image should have standard sizing because wide-angle and panorama style photos are more likely to have difficulty fitting the screen dimensions. If the picture is wide or oddly shaped, the resizing often results in a distorted and undesirable view. In this case, severe cropping is necessary to bring the photo within a standardized form that can resize easily to the screen dimensions.

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After selecting an image, set it as wallpaper. In many cases, the picture will fit with minor adjustments using the internal phone settings, but in some instances, an app is worth using to manipulate the photo size to find the perfect fit. Several apps exist specifically to assist with wallpaper photo size adjustments on the iPhone.

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Adjust the iPhone Wallpaper Size

Begin the process by selecting the "Settings" menu on your iPhone. Tap the "Wallpaper" option to open the settings specific to the lock screen and home screen wallpaper. The dark appearance setting is on this screen (if your phone supports dark mode), and it warns of a dim appearance if the screen settings are dimmed. Tap the "Choose a New Wallpaper" at the top of the screen.

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The three options at the top of the screen are Dynamic, Stills and Live. Because you are using a regular still image, select "Stills," followed by "All Photos" or the name of the album that contains the image you want.

Scroll through the camera images and locate the desired picture. Tap the photo to bring it into the wallpaper view. The photo does not automatically fit in some instances. Use your index finger and thumb to zoom in or out until the sizing is just right. You can also use an index finger to move the photo left, right, up or down. When it is like you want it, tap "Set" and select from one of three options: Set Lock Screen, Set Home Screen or Set Both.

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If the photo doesn't fully fill the screen, it may be affected by ​Perspective Zoom​. Locate the phone icon with the diagonal arrows on the bottom of the screen and tap to turn off this setting. The zoom helps auto-adjust the image by zooming on the main feature, but it's not always the desired look.

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Use an App

Multiple apps exist specifically to resize images for wallpaper on iPhone screens. Apps also exist for Android phone wallpaper settings, and they all make life easy when you can't size a great photo in the general phone settings. They offer cropping, moving and zoom features to manipulate images for the perfect fit.

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The ​FitWallp​ app is a common tool that is intuitive and easy to use. ​Wallax​ is also a good one that forces the photo to fit a minimum size so that it doesn't shrink on the screen. ​WallPaperSize​ is also a useful app that uses easy zoom features and scaling to find the perfect fit in a matter of seconds. All of these are available in the iPhone App Store.

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Apps are convenient and ensure everything fits as intended. Give the internal phone settings a quick try first and use an app if the sizing isn't working out with the built-in parameters.

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