Your iPhone will soon get a neat new feature when iOS 18 launches later this year: dynamic wallpapers. These will subtly change at various points throughout the day, giving you a phone background that automatically adjusts itself as the hours pass.
The feature has been spotted in the latest iOS 18 developer beta 3, which was released yesterday. If you’ve signed up to the developer beta, you can get the update by opening the Settings app on your iPhone and going to General > Software Update and selecting the Update Now button.
In previous iOS 18 betas, Apple had launched a handful of new wallpapers, as it does every year, including four named Yellow, Pink, Azure and Purple. However, these were static images – while each one had a light and a dark option, they would not change unless you specifically adjusted your wallpaper choice.
The default iOS 18 wallpaper now has a dynamic option Changing according to time of the day ig pic.twitter.com/ejCtVVG4lQJuly 8, 2024
Now, there’s a fifth option named Dynamic (as you can see above). With this, iOS 18 handles the wallpaper change on your behalf. Instead of simply having light and dark editions, each background has numerous different versions that it cycles through over the course of the day.
It’s not yet clear what the conditions are for each adjustment (such as how many hours elapse between each alteration), but it’s a pleasant feature to have on your iPhone.
Finally arriving on iOS
The macOS operating system for Apple’s Mac computers has featured dynamic wallpapers for years, so in a way it’s strange that iOS has taken so long to catch up.
The reason for the delay might be something to do with Apple’s increased customization options in iOS 18. For instance, there’s a new setting that can automatically change certain app icons from light to dark when you enable dark mode. Perhaps Apple wanted to wait for this feature to be ready before pairing it with dynamic wallpapers, as the two seem to go hand in hand.
Right now, iOS 18 is only available as a developer beta. However, the public beta is expected to launch at some point in July, with the full release following in a few months’ time. With plenty of interesting new features on the way, it could be one of the biggest overhauls in the history of iOS.
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