Animated live wallpapers have been around since the earliest days of Android, but I’ll admit to having forgotten about them for several years. Here are the six best options I’ve found after giving them another go.
6Chill Vector Live Wallpaper
It’s easy for a live wallpaper to be overstimulating. Chill Vector Live Wallpaper is anything but. This app provides a variety of different landscapes all created using soothing vector shapes. There are mountain ranges, rolling hills, city skylines, and open skies. Each is simple yet stylish in a way that I could screenshot any frame using it as its own static wallpaper.
One major perk? The backgrounds are never quite the same! Each time you select a setting, a new but similar version is generated. The environments are also available in each of the four seasons and in nine different weather patterns. You’re welcome to select your favorite or, as I prefer, let the app match the time and weather of your current location.
5Cartogram
Cartogram takes generating a location-based background to another level. It creates a stylized map of any spot in Earth using a top-down view from Google Maps. These can be striking depictions using only two colors, such as a black and white outline of a map of Pittsburgh, or you could instead of for a full-color photographic satellite view of the shores of the Outer Banks.
As you might imagine, there are genuinely infinite possibilities here. you may select any location on Earth, select from an existing color palette, or create your own. It’s the kind of work that pairs well with a custom icon theme, so you might want to grab Icon Pack Studio to go with it.
4Earth 3D
If you want a live wallpaper that looks perfect out of the box with no additional effort in your last, I’d recommend Earth 3D. This app turns your background into a 3D view of our planet, rotating it slightly whenever you swipe the screen and giving it a large spin when you go from one homescreen to another. While you can toggle the parallax effort and adjust the degree of zoom, you really don’t need to. I’d say this is one option you can install, set it, and forget it.
There are a lot of apps with this name, so be sure to search for the one from 3Planesoft, or just tap the link below.
3Chroma Galaxy
If you simply want an abstract animated walloaper, Chroma doesn’t just deliver one—it provides you with hundreds. 30 are available for free, both as still images and animated ones.
Unlike the other wallpapers I’ve listed, these animated options are not configurable or interactive in any way, nor do they provide parallax effects that shift as you tilt your phone. These are simply just animated videos that play in a loop.
Still, there’s something to be said for numbers. With so many to choose from, there’s bound to be something you like, and you can browse without having to deal with ads. Each option supports screens all the way up to 4K.
2Doodle
This one goes out to fans of the whole Google Pixel vibe. Patrick Zedler’s Doodle app provides customizable wallpapers primarily from the Pixel 4 and Pixel 6 era. You can swap up the colors to ensure the look always matches your case or your icon theme.
These aren’t animated by default, but you can enable a parallax effect that will shift various segments around as you tilt your phone.
1Muzei
Okay, this entry isn’t one I whole sought out. Muzei might just be the single oldest Android app that I continue to download on nearly every Android phone I’ve owned—the app first appeared in 2014.
Muzei solves one of my biggest problems with any wallpaper, live or not. That’s the way most images are so bright and busy that they clash both with app icons and their labels. Muzei addresses this by blurring the background and making it dim. When you want to see your wallpaper in detail, all you need to do is double-tap the image to bring it into focus.
Muzei is open source and can automatically load a new wallpaper each day or at another interval of your choice. The default artwork comes from WikiArt, but you can also select any image saved to your phone or cycle through an entire local folder.
Live wallpapers hit your phone or tablet’s battery harder than a static one, but the added joy they spark may just be worth it. If nothing else, they can make your phone feel fresh for a week or two. But you never know—one might stick with you for years, just like Muzei has for me.
