iOS 16 Wallpaper Shuffle not working

Photo shuffle fix

I consulted with senior advisors about photo shuffle and selecting people in iOS

it was giving me a random limited amount of 9 people to select even though my people album has over 35 people

they said iOS 16 randomly selects a certain people and not much to do

thinking out of the box I

deleted all my people in the people album causing iOS to repopulate all and I mean all the people into the album

I then tried the photo shuffle and noticed it took time mind you that every single person was now as an option for wallpaper

I’m warning everyone that even though the people where all there to select it took over night the phone plugged in to charge and locked for photo shuffle to repopulate all the individual pictures into the people .if you try it right after all your people show up in photo shuffle you will notice when you select the people there are no photos so wait at least 12 -16 hrs then after that every single people that was in my photo album was selectable in my phot shuffle .

hope this works for everyone like it worked for me .

It seems that 16.1.2 has fixed my wife’s phone. She has a selection of all the “people” she has made in her albums and the photo shuffling is working without issue.

Hopefully the same for all of you.

Fix for phot shuffle missing people

I found a workaround to fix limited people to select from photo shuffle even though there are many in my case over 35 people in my people album

thinking out of the box I deleted all my people in the people album

This forced iOS 16 to repopulate all my pictures of people in the people photo album

then I went to wallpaper phot shuffle

select people and every single person was available to select that was in my people album all 35

the only thing is when you select people right after the process it doesn’t work it shows no pictures

i guess iOS 16 needs time to repopulate every picture from your phot album into the wallpaper application so in my case I charged my phone overnight and waited till the next day by noon I could select from all 35 people all the pictures were there for use featured photos

again I hope this works for everyone this was my experience hope it helps

Hello awarrumbungle01,

You have some concerns about the new wallpapers in iOS 16. We'll do our best to assist with this.

You mentioned having a few issues. Let's break them down.

You can't select your favorite people. Are these people identified in the Photos app albums? Learn more here: Use the People album in Photos on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

Limited photos get cycled. Did you select a Shuffle Frequency? Did you use the Featured Photos or did you Select Photos Manually? We'd suggest setting them up manually, so you can select which ones you'd like to add: Change the wallpaper on your iPhone

Lastly, you mentioned that Depth/Floating Apps & Texts don't work. If you are talking about the Depth Effect when selecting a wallpaper, then see: Personalize your iPhone Lock Screen

Note: This option may not be available for all photos. Layering is not available on wallpapers with widgets. The multilayered effect is available on supported models. Layering is available only on images with people, pets, or the sky, and isn’t available on every image in those categories. Layering may not be available if the subject is too high, too low, or obscures too much of the clock.

Let us know if this helps out or not, take care.

Choose Reset People Suggestions in Settings. It doesn’t reset everything back to zero. It just resets anybody that you might have chosen to feature less back to normal.

Use the select photos manually option when creating a new photo shuffle wallpaper.

I removed people from Favorites and after couple of days they appeared in shuffle option.

Similar problem. I have at least 12 people defined in my photos but only one person appears when I try to select people in the Wallpaper photo shuffle (see screenshots below). I tried to troubleshoot by turning off the photo shuffle wallpaper and restarting my phone then turning shuffle back on. Before I did that I had two people show up as options so it made the problem worse.

Nah. I agree with everyone here. I’m only getting some of my favorites to show up when selecting “people” for the shuffle. My wife only gets the option to choose one of our daughters. It’d be kind of nice to be able to select the people want to rotate these photos through. Lol. There’s a bug here.

So this is definitely my favorite about the new Lock Screen. It pulls up photos we haven’t seen in a long time and they are always a great surprise. Please dig into this.

Basically, not all of our “favorite” people are selectable in photo shuffle.

Thank you

Yep, same problem here. Once I moved to the official release I lost “Pets” as an option in photo shuffle, I’ve reset the phone, turned off and can’t get pets to show up again. In the Photos app I have 1.6k of photos that come up as Dog so I know that photos can see them. They are obviously not communicating to the photo shuffle for some reason. Also same on the people - about 25 identified people in photos, only 1 comes up in shuffle.

[Edited by Moderator] 

Like everyone else on this thread, I am experiencing issues with the photo shuffle feature when creating a personalized wallpaper. I have about 25 people identified in the People album of the Photos app but only 4 appear as options when choosing photo shuffle and two are not people chosen as “favorites”. Also if I tap on the “photos” option and select the “featured” or “people” tabs it only gives about six photos to choose from. I performed a hard reset, turned off “Show Featured Content” , tapped on “Reset suggested Memories” and “Reset People Suggestions” and there has been no change. You would think that turning off “Show Featured Content” would eliminate all featured photos as options when creating a photo wallpaper but it didn’t, same options appeared. Even reset all settings and rebooted phone again and no change. There’s definite a bug there.

Hello, I am having the exact same issue. I have gone through the People Album to make sure that all of my family members are properly identified, and they are. But only 2 of the 4 show up as options in the Lock Screen customization. Help!

Similar issue. I had all 4 of my family members on rotation until just recently. I started to notice more of the same photos cycling and so I went to check the settings. Now I only have the option to shuffle through two of my children’s photos, even though my wife and three children have their own albums favorites and plenty of photos in each one.

Just noting, like many others here, that it doesn’t work for me either. I have multiple “Favorites” identified in my Photo Albums but the Photo Shuffle doesn’t recognize them. It gets worse as I play with it. Definitely a defect(s) somewhere.

Issues still outstanding include:

1. Depth effect works only when I manually select photos. When the same photo comes up in with shuffle depth effect doesn’t work…in fact when I touch the 3 dots to select frequency of photos the “depth effect” option is not there altogether.

2. Offered people in shuffle mode is limited to a few and never changes, I have some other people whom I would like to include and cannot.