Living Backgrounds

Created by Patrick Nomad

Phone backgrounds that evolve over time.

Generate Image

A calendar showing all days of the current year, with each dot representing a day.

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How to Add to Your iPhone

Create the Automation

Creating an automation allows your iPhone to automatically fetch a new image to automatically update your Lock Screen wallpaper. I know this is a long process! But you only need to do it once!

  1. First I suggest creating a new new Wallpaper. This is done by going to your lock screen, holding down on the wallpaper and tapping the circled plus icon. By doing this, we make sure we're not overwriting your existing wallpaper.
  2. Open the Shortcuts app on your iPhone.
  3. Tap the Automations tab at the bottom.
  4. Tap New Automation → Time of Day.
  5. Set the time to 12:00 AM (00:00) and choose Daily.
  6. Enable Run Immediately, then tap Next.
  7. Tap Create New Shortcut. You’ll now add two actions inside this shortcut.

First Action: Get Contents of URL

  1. Search for Get Contents of URL.
  2. In the URL field, paste the URL you copied from the image generator above.
  3. If the keyboard is still visible, tap the X right above it or the blue checkmark right under the keyboard to close it.

Second Action: Set Wallpaper Photo

  1. Search for Set Wallpaper Photo.
  2. You can tap on "Set Wallaper #" to make sure it's the wallpaper created in step 1.
  3. Tap the Lock Screen and Home Screen option (not the arrow beside it), unselect Home Screen to only have Lock Screen selected. Tap the blue circled checkbox on the top right close.
  4. Tap the blue circled arrow within this action to open more options, then:
    • Disable Show Preview.
    • Disable Crop Subject.
  1. When you’re done setting up the actions above, tap the top right blue circled checkmark. Your iPhone will then automatically fetch a new image from your URL and set it as your lock screen at the time you chose every day.
  2. (Optional)To set the wallpaper immediately, you can open the Automation and tap play button on the bottom right.

Change Image

If you decide to change the image later, you don't need to redo the automation. You can skip straight to the step where the URL is added. Just update the URL in the Get Contents of URL action with a new URL from the image generator above, and the next run will use the new image.

Remove the Automation

If you ever want to stop using this, open the Shortcuts app, go to Automations, swipe left on this automation, and tap Delete.