How to Make a Video Your Background: Live Wallpaper on Your Devices

The ability to customize the background on the home and lock screen of your mobile device is a cool feature. Instead of having the standard backgrounds that come with your phone, you can stand out and use your own pictures. But for even more originality and personality, you can now use your live photos as your wallpaper. The process will look a little different depending on whether you have an Apple iOS device or an Android. But, either way, we’ll walk you through how to make a video your background on your device.

How to Make a Video Your Background on an iPhone

If you’re an iPhone user, this doesn’t get any easier. The first step is to go to your camera roll and tap to open the live photo you want to set as your background.

In the bottom left-hand corner of your screen, click the arrow pointing up icon. Now, you’ll want to select use as Wallpaper (the photo on your lock screen will animate when you press your finger down on the screen!).

Another option is to go to settings and choose wallpaper and that’s where you’ll, well, choose a wallpaper.

How to Make a Video Your Background on an Android

Have an Android? Instead of accessing your camera roll, you’ll have to download an app from Google Play. There are a few apps you can choose from:

Video Live Wallpaper
Wallpaper Maker
Video Wall
Video to Wallpaper

Today, we’ll explore two of the most popular.

How to Make a Video Your Background: Video to Wallpaper

First, you’ll want to tap the plus sign (+) found on the bottom right hand of your screen. Then tap Choose. Here’s where you’ll select your video and click Ok.

Next, choose Apply and Ok.

From the list displayed, pick video to wallpaper and then set wallpaper.

How to Make a Video Your Background: Video Live Wallpaper

If you use the Video Live Wallpaper app, you’ll want to select Choose Video (be sure to click allow to give permission to access your camera roll and media files!).

Select the video you’d like to use as your live wallpaper. Here, you can adjust the start and stop times by using the slider tool and tap play to preview the wallpaper clip.

By tapping the picture icon in the upper right corner, you can actually get a preview of what the video will look like after you set it as your wallpaper. The video display view can be changed by clicking the gear icon in the upper right-hand corner. With this option, you’ll be able to enable and disable any audio and make adjustments to the video size.

When you’re happy, choose set wallpaper, and if you want to display the wallpaper on the home screen, lock screen, or both.

Can You Make Your Desktop Live Wallpaper?

Anything is possible! But much like the process for Android, you’ll have to use a third-party app when you’re looking for how to make a video your background.

In our last blog, we briefly mentioned VLC for how to compress video, but that’s not all you can use VLC for! You can actually set your own videos as your desktop background using this free program. So, if you have a Windows 10 desktop and want to set a video wallpaper, VLC is the tool for you.

After opening VLC, the first thing to do is to start playing your video. To make the video your desktop wallpaper, right-click the playback window and click Video > Set as Wallpaper.

Be mindful that the video wallpaper will only work as long as you have your VLC player open and playing your video.

You can end your video wallpaper by stopping the video in VLC’s player window or by closing VLC completely. When you do this, your desktop will revert to the original wallpaper you had displayed.

If you like the way your video background looks and feels and want to keep it for the long term, you’ll need to use another method.

How to Make a Video Your Background Long-term

If you’re not looking for a temporary fix, Push Video Wallpapers is an awesome (and free!) app for creating video wallpapers is a tool called Push Video Wallpapers. The only minor complaint is that users of the free version are frequently reminded to upgrade to the paid version, which costs $10.

Push Video Wallpapers

Step one for how to make a video your background using Push Video Wallpapers is to install the program.

Next, select the Playlist icon (located in the top right-hand corner), and from the drop-down, choose new to create a new playlist.

Name your playlist and click okay to save it.

Click the + sign (or add icon) in the bottom right corner to add a new GIF or video to the playlist you’ve created.

Here, you’ll find your video file to choose the video or gif you want to set as your background. (The drop-down menu will give you options for video files and image files, so be sure you’re in the right menu!). To add to your playlist, click add.

In Push Video Wallpapers, you can set your list to repeat or even randomize, and there are the usual video playback options (play, pause, skip).

If the video you want to use is on YouTube rather than saved to your computer, simply choose the Add URL icon instead (again, you’ll find this in the bottom right) and paste the video URL in this window. Click Add to Playlist.

*Note* You can also use a YouTube playlist by selecting YouTube from the playlist icon drop-down. Simply add the URL to the playlist and click Add YouTube Playlist in the Add YouTube playlist window.

Making a video your background is actually fairly simple, and we’d love to hear what programs you've used to do this. And don’t forget, if you’re interested in video production or have questions, we’re here for you! Don’t hesitate to contact us.

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