My iPhone keeps changing the wallpaper

Thank you for this! I went in to settings and noticed that I had customized lock settings for both my Sleep Focus and Personal Focus. Have removed those and hopefully now won’t have this issue anymore.

Hello ~ Take a look here…

Change the wallpaper on your iPhone - Apple *

*Rotate multiple photos as your Lock Screen wallpaper

~Katana-San~

I had added a wallpaper to one of my focus settings (Do Not Disturb). When I deleted the wallpaper custom settings it all went away and began functioning properly again.

Settings < focus then pick the particupfocus and delete any custom

wallpaper settings.

at least that resolved my issues

Ok I think I found a few solutions since it seems we all have similar but different problems:

If you keep getting your old lockscreen as both the lock and home screens, and if it appears as an option in the wallpaper menu, follow this guide (https://www.laptopmag.com/how-to/how-to-delete-wallpaper-on-iphone) to delete that wallpaper pair and you’ll be able to select your custom wallpaper without it defaulting to the old one.

If you use any of the focus modes such as bedtime or do not disturb, go to Focus in settings and make sure there is no wallpaper in those sections. It should be blank, and if not there’s a (-) button that deletes them. The reason this one was buggy was because turning the focus modes off before their set times pass causes the focus modes to turn back on and select their designated wallpapers which gets really annoying.

If you get the exact same lock and Home Screen combination that you used to have before updating your phone, a mix of the two solutions above helped me fix that issue. (For now, not sure if it’ll come back)

If you believe you have one of these issues just restart your phone and see what wallpaper it turns into.

The issues seams to be adding your preferred wallpaper to a focus. If you add it, it’s going to always trigger that particular focus, being permanently associated to it.

In my case I had added my favorite wallpaper to a focus related to work. That wallpaper became exclusively linked to that focus, so any time I deactivate that focus, instead of maintaining that wallpaper, that should also be my default one, it changed to another wallpaper.

Once you remove the wallpaper from the focus mode, or choose a different one to replace it, the issue stops.

I think Apple could do something other than simply linking them permanently to a focus mode.

Just open the focus in setting and change any focus settings to your preferred wall paper and Lock Screen or even just remove the radio button to deselect any wall paper or lock screen. Then sleep your phone to get to the Lock Screen. Long press the screen and swipe up on the wallpaper you don’t want anymore. Then confirm delete by pressing the trash can symbol. Lastly swipe to the local screen you do want and unlock your phone. This should resolve your wallpaper and lock screen issues.

I was finally able to fix this - when i had set my new wallpaper it had kept the old one and wouldn’t let me delete it - i had to pull up the old wallpaper (hold on Lock Screen), customize it, and then delete any others so there was nothing to change it to.

Just_JW wrote:

so how do you replicate your ‘normal’ screen/wallpaper setup to carry over to the night mode if you switch to night-time/focus mode?

Have you tried going to Settings>Focus>Sleep>Customize Screens. If any of the pictures of screens just above that have a little minus sign in the upper left corner, tap on that. It will remove any customizations including different wallpaper. Also, you may want to tap on Options and then turn off Sleep Screen.

In my case, I only have a custom screen for my watch but, if you had one for the phone, you'd see a similar minus sign.

Hello again ~ Try this…

Force restart iPhone - Apple Support

~Katana-San~

Have you tried setting wallpaper from the Settings app, rather than from the lock screen?

I’ve just done that and hoping it sticks

I fixed it by simply making both of my wallpapers the same. Now if it switches I don’t notice or care. It’s still ducked up but that’s my little workaround!

Thank you to the person who solved this issue. Fix is in focus mode!

My observations: Customized wallpapers, associating them with focus modes, was working well until the recent iOS 17.3 update (2024-01-22). Ever since, I too have wallpapers “changing by themselves”. I’ve noticed that unlike before, selecting a wallpaper (in Settings…Wallpaper…Set as Current) ALSO changes to any focus mode assigned to it. I believe that is unlike before, when the opposite occurred - changing focus mode also changed the assigned wallpaper (clearly the intended purpose of the feature).

Also, on my 14 Pro it seems to insist on reverting back to a particular wallpaper no matter what I do - this new bug, changing on its own. I can change any wallpaper associated setting, but it will not “stick”. Even locking the phone then upon next wake, the wallpaper is back to the one IT wants on all of the time.

Having a focus active seems so far to keep it’s assigned wallpaper, though I’m not quite certain of that yet.

In short, this is new, undesirable behavior the way it’s working now.

Just an Update to My Post- I DID find out How to DELETE Focus Settings (but not Default choices), and I DID go thru Settings and NOT Customize ANY of my Focus Settings with a Wallpaper.

I will see If this will solve my ongoing arbitrary Wallpaper Changing problems. Again, TIA.

MamaMS wrote:

Help needed please. Just upgraded to the 15 pro max and I’ve just had it for 2 days and ready to go back to my 13.

Both phones have the current update so I’m good. BUT!!!! Why does the 15 keep changing the home and back ground screen to pictures that I don’t want and have no idea how it got on the phone. Once I go back and change it then put it as “set as current” it goes back to what every the phone wants to do AND IT goes straight to “Do not disturb” I changed all of the devices to not share settings.

Please someone help me to understand why this keeps happening. (I ain’t that old that I can’t fix it)😩

Do you have Focus set to change home screens based on the particular focus? Settings>Focus