We all spend a lot of time looking at our phones, which means a lot of time looking at the wallpaper backdrop on the lock screen and the home screens—so it makes sense to have something eye-catching that you like looking at as your background of choice. Photos of pets, loved ones, and favorite places are of course popular wallpaper choices, and there's no shortage of wallpaper galleries on the web for you to browse through. But if you want to mix things up even more on your Google Pixel, you can create your own.
As long as you've got a Google Pixel phone running Android 14, you have access to a couple of useful wallpaper features: AI wallpaper and emoji wallpaper. Either of them can create a new backdrop for you in minutes.
It looks likely that these tools will eventually come to Samsung phones and other Android handsets. Nothing has been confirmed at this time, but it's something to look out for if you don't have a Google Pixel.
How to create AI wallpaper
Long press on a blank area of the home screen, then pick Wallpaper and style from the pop-up menu (or go to Wallpaper and style from Settings). You'll see a preview of the backgrounds you currently have set up for your home screens and lock screen, and you can tap More wallpapers to see options for changing them.
If you're ready to start handing over the job of wallpaper creation to Google's artificial intelligence engines, tap AI wallpaper. You'll be asked to choose a theme to get started: Your options here include Night, Terrain, Painting, Imaginary, and Texture, so choose the one that most closely matches what you want to create.
You can't just type out any prompt you'd like to generate a wallpaper image. Instead, you need to adapt the prompt that's already there on screen: Tap any of the underlined words to pick a different word from a list. If you're not sure exactly what you want, tap Inspire me to generate a wallpaper based on a randomized prompt.
For example, the default imaginary wallpaper prompt is: "A surreal castle made of silk in shades of coral and tan." You can change "castle," "silk," and "coral and tan" in that sentence—the word "castle" can be switched to alternatives such as "bridge" or "lighthouse," but you're not able to type in any word you like. When you're ready, tap Create wallpaper to see what appears.
You can swipe left and right to see the different variations that have been generated, and up at the top you'll see thumbs up and thumbs down icons that give feedback to Google's AI image generator. You can repeat the process until you find something suitable, and switch themes using the drop-down menu at the top.
When you've got something you like, tap on the tick icon in the top right corner. As with any new wallpaper, when you tap Set wallpaper on the next screen, you get the option of applying it to your lock screen, to your home screens, or both.
How to create emoji wallpaper
You follow the same route to get to the emoji wallpaper generator as you do for the AI wallpaper generator: Either choose Wallpaper and style from the main Settings screen, or long press on a blank part of one of the home screens and choose Wallpaper and style. The previews of the current lock screen and home screen wallpapers are shown, and you can tap on More wallpapers to make changes.
Select Emoji workshop to start playing around with the feature: The next screen will show emoji wallpapers you've previously created, if there are any, so you can always get back to them again if needed. To start a new one, tap on the large + (plus) icon underneath the Create emoji wallpaper heading.
Your first task is to choose some emojis to base the wallpaper on: You'll see some suggestions already in place for you under the Emoji heading, but you can tap Edit emoji to change them, or Inspire me to get a new, randomized selection. You're allowed up to 14 emojis, but wallpapers can also be created from just a single one.
Tap on Patterns, and you're able to adjust the layout of your wallpaper. There are a variety of different layout options to pick from—including Stacks, Sprinkle, and Mosaic—and you can see how each one looks by tapping on it. Use the slider underneath to adjust the size of the emojis you've picked.
Lastly, the Colors tab lets you (as you might have guessed) set the color scheme for your wallpaper masterpiece. You are limited in terms of the color combinations you can pick from, but there are quite a few different options, which you can see by swiping left and right on the dialog box.
When you're happy, tap on the tick icon in the top right corner of the screen to see a preview. Select Set wallpaper, and as usual you'll be able to apply the backdrop to the lock screen, to the home screens, or both (for a consistent feel). The new wallpaper is also added to the Emoji workshop page we saw earlier.