The lock screen is portrait on a phone and cropped on a desktop
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photographLock screen wallpaper is a separate image slot from the home screen or the desktop on Windows, Android and iOS, with its own crop, its own safe area, and the clock, the date and the notification stack drawn on top of it.
That is why a picture that looks correct behind your app icons can look wrong the moment the phone locks, and why setting one does not set the other. The slot is different, the furniture over it is different, and on a phone the shape is different again from the desktop the picture was probably drawn for.
Two slots, not two copies of the same setting
Two slots means two files, and every current platform treats them that way. iOS keeps a Lock Screen wallpaper and a Home Screen wallpaper that can hold entirely different images. Android does the same, with a chooser that asks whether the picture you picked is for the home screen, the lock screen or both. Windows sets the desktop background and the lock screen in two different places in Settings, and changing one leaves the other exactly as it was.
macOS is the exception worth naming, because it does not expose a lock screen picture the way iOS does. In current versions the lock and login screen are drawn from the desktop picture, so on a Mac laptop the file you set as your desktop is the file that appears behind the clock, and there is no second slot to fill.
What the system draws over your picture, and where
The system draws a fixed set of furniture over every lock screen picture, and its position is not negotiable. On iOS the top of the frame carries the clock and the date, and the bottom carries the flashlight and camera buttons; Depth Effect will push the clock behind a subject where there is a clear foreground and will simply refuse to engage where there is not. On Android the top carries the clock and any notifications, and the bottom carries shortcut buttons that vary by manufacturer. On Windows the clock and date sit low in the frame with notification text beside them.
| Platform | Separate lock slot | Drawn over the picture | Typical panel |
|---|---|---|---|
| Android phone | Yes, chosen at set time | Clock, date, notifications, shortcut buttons | 1080 x 2400 or 1440 x 3120 |
| iPhone | Yes, a distinct Lock Screen | Clock and date at the top, two buttons at the bottom | 1179 x 2556 or 1290 x 2796 |
| Windows laptop or desktop | Yes, set separately in Settings | Clock, date, notification text | 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440 |
| Mac | No, drawn from the desktop picture | Clock and account name | 2560 x 1664 on a MacBook Air 13 in |
The practical rule that falls out of the table is to leave the top third of a phone lock screen picture quiet. A face, a signature, a piece of lettering or the focal point of the composition placed there will spend most of its life behind a large clock.
Setting a different lock screen and home screen on Android
To set a different lock screen and home screen on Android, choose the picture first and answer the destination question second, because that question is the whole mechanism.
- Press and hold an empty area of the home screen, then choose Wallpaper or Wallpaper and style.
- Pick the image from the gallery or from the supplied set.
- Position and crop it, since the preview shows the crop the launcher will keep.
- Choose Lock screen, Home screen, or both when the destination prompt appears.
- Repeat the whole sequence with the second picture for the other slot.
Menu wording differs between manufacturers, and the destination prompt is the step that does not. If a device never asks, its wallpaper picker is applying the image to both slots, and the separate lock screen setting will be under the phone's lock screen settings instead.
A lock screen that changes on its own is a setting, not a fault
A lock screen that changes automatically has a rotation feature turned on, and every platform has one. Windows arrives with Spotlight selected, which supplies and rotates its own images; switching the lock screen type from Spotlight to Picture stops it. Android manufacturers ship equivalent features under names like a lock screen carousel or a wallpaper gallery, usually enabled from the lock screen settings and disabled in the same place. iOS does not rotate a Lock Screen by itself, but it holds several saved Lock Screens that can be switched between, and a shortcut or a Focus mode can change which one is active.
Turning rotation off is the same step everywhere: select a single picture as the lock screen source instead of a supplied set.
WHAT GETS LOST
A lock screen crop removes more than a home screen crop does, because the FILE loses the same edges to the SCREEN shape and then loses the top of what survives to the clock. A picture with its subject centered survives both. A picture composed with headroom at the top loses the headroom, which is usually the least costly outcome available.
The size a lock screen picture should be
The size a lock screen picture should be is the native pixel count of the panel in portrait, which on a mainstream Android phone is 1080 x 2400, on a flagship is 1440 x 3120, and on the standard iPhone class is 1179 x 2556. Those are tall shapes at around 19.5:9 and 20:9, and almost no artwork is composed at those ratios, so a landscape picture will always be cropped hard to fill one. A 16:9 file scaled to cover the height of a 9:19.5 screen has to be about 3.85 times as wide as the screen, which puts most of it off frame.
On Windows the lock screen matches the desktop resolution, so 1920 x 1080 or 2560 x 1440 covers most machines, and the same file that works as a desktop background works here. The site's page on what size a wallpaper should be carries the full set of panel figures, and the device hub carries the per screen table. A live wallpaper, meanwhile, is a video your device never stops playing, and most platforms will not accept one in the lock screen slot at all: Wallpaper Engine is a Steam program that plays things on your desktop, and the Windows lock screen is not part of the desktop it draws on.