Some people like to set their phone’s wallpaper to a photo of someone they love. If that’s not you, then these sites and apps will give you a free wallpaper that speaks to your sense of style and taste.
There are apps that change your Android wallpaper automatically, as well as plenty of places to find an iPhone wallpaper. What makes this list unique? It’s a bit different from the run-of-the-mill types of wallpapers you’ll get, from movie posters without text to designer-made backgrounds.
Movie Mania (Web): Movie and TV Series Posters Without Any Text
When you usually download a poster of your favorite movie or TV series, it has the title on it. It doesn’t look great as a background, does it? Movie Mania removes those titles to give you gorgeous wallpapers for any phone or tablet.
Movie Mania covers a wide variety of topics, from the latest movies to movie-specific posters, like an entire series on Avengers: Infinity War. It also packs posters with the same theme under one topic or category, like Halloween or minimalistic and simple wallpapers. Click any you like, choose the resolution you want, and download it for free.
Most of the wallpapers at Movie Mania are vertical, which means they are fit for phones, but there is something for the desktop too. In the top-right corner, you can switch between phone or desktop, the latter of which gives you widescreen wallpapers that look better on your laptop. The collection isn’t as good as what you get with phones, but it’s nothing to scoff at either.
Wllppr (Web): Community of Wallpaper Enthusiasts
You don’t have to go looking through hundreds of wallpapers and free stock image sites just to find a background that you like. There are people who do that and curate the best finds in one place.
Wllppr is a community of wallpaper enthusiasts who like to find high-quality images from different artists, designers, and photographers which would be perfect as backgrounds for computers or mobiles. While a lot of the collection is widescreen and hence better for desktops, you’ll get enough for phones too. Plus, any image can be automatically cropped for your phone’s aspect ratio and resolution.
Before you start browsing, make life easier for yourself. In the left sidebar, choose the device you want to download for, and Wllppr will show results accordingly. Plus, you can filter the choices by categories you like.
21 Wallpaper: 21 New Wallpapers From Artists, Every Three Months
21 Wallpaper is a cool new project that tries to give you something new and funky as your background. The project gets seven of the world’s best illustrators and designers and asks them to make three of their works available for free as a screen wallpaper.
As you might guess, each artist has their own style, which makes these images unlike anything you’ve seen on sites where you can download a massive number of wallpapers. Forget about those cool vectors, pixel-art images, and other boring stuff. This is real art being given to you for free, legally.
The designers have also taken the care to give you a landscape version for computers, as well as a portrait version for phones. It’s not just randomly cropped, there is thought behind the phone version too.
Atlas Wallpaper (iOS) and Mapapers (Android): Turn Maps Into Gorgeous Backgrounds
Yup, you can set any part of the world’s map as your background. And it’s not going to look like a cluttered Google Map either.
Atlas Wallpaper and Mapapers work the same way, but on iOS and Android respectively. You browse or search for any location in the world. Pan and scan, and zoom in or out, as you would with any map app. Then choose from a series of color styles, which flatten the image and add gorgeous hues to it. It looks much better than the street map view or the terrain view you’re used to, and it can go with whatever theme you’ve set up on your phone.
Once you’ve got the map how you like it, save it on your phone’s memory. Then it’s a simple matter of setting it as your wallpaper.
While Atlas Wallpaper is free, Mapapers isn’t. It also adds a “Google” watermark to the image. If you want to avoid paying, try this trick to set any map location as your phone’s wallpaper.
Download: Atlas Wallpaper for iOS (Free)
Download: Mapapers for Android ($1)
Pattern Cooler (Web): Customize Patterns to Your Tastes
Some of the best wallpapers aren’t a gorgeous scenic photograph or an artist’s classy painting. It’s a simple image, looped endlessly to form a pattern, and with a dash of color to make it pop. That’s what Pattern Cooler is all about.
Be warned, you’ll spend a fair amount of time mesmerized at the huge collection of patterns in this site. You can browse by style or color, or search for something you’re particularly looking for.
When you find anything you like, that’s where Pattern Cooler gets even… cooler. Each pattern is completely customizable. You can change the colors, the texture, and the opacity of different elements. There is even a random color theme generator to suggest different color themes that complement each other.
But once you’ve found what you want, you’ll need a little manual labor. The max size for a free download is a 300×300 pixel pattern. So get that, then open it in your favorite photo editor, and copy-paste it over and over on a larger canvas. It’ll take only 5-10 minutes.
Find a Wallpaper You Love
There is no “best” wallpaper for a phone, as each individual’s style is different. With the above five apps, you should find something that you love, but there’s always more to look out for.
For example, there are other sites for amazing high-definition wallpapers on mobile and desktop. These include apps that turn the background into a story, or wallpapers that change by the time of the day and even classy picture of space and the universe. Go check it out.
Read the full article: 5 Places to Download Free, Funky Wallpapers for Phones or Desktops