iOS 16.1 Lock Screen Wallpaper Display

I just got off the phone with support at Apple with this same problem, my custom images I've had set for my Home and Lock screens are suddenly missing and I'm seeing a black background for both since the iOS 16.1 update. The first support person had me heading down a path backing up then wiping my phone completely, and restoring it to factory settings and reinstalling iOS 16.1. Luckily, they sent me to a senior support person, who diagnosed the problem -- and it's now solved. The issue had to do with my Settings > Focus > Do Not Disturb and Sleep settings. If you have those Focus times set, you MUST select a Customized Screen for Lock and Home screens, or else when those Focus times kick on, the screen settings will default to black (nothing). Once we figured this out, I reset my non-focus Home and Lock screens to my original photos and the issue has not reoccurred.

Check settings for Focus.

Look in each subject (do not disturb, driving, personal, sleep, work) and look for the "customize screens" option.

If you have focus enabled, the default will be a dark Lock Screen. But you can change each subject individually to show your favourite wallpaper.

Enjoy

/Claude

www.hunt2eat.dk

Since the onset of this behavior (blackscreen instead of wallpaper) at exactly 16.1.1 update - I have found exactly ONE sequence of actions that fixes it:

Completely delete your old wallpaper/screensaver customization. (Yes, make a new one, and make it something else, and make it active). - THEN delete the old one. (You can't delete one if it's the only one as its still active).

THEN - shutdown/reboot your phone. (Don't need hard reset. just normal settings/general/shut down -after its down, then hold right side button to restart.)

THEN go put your old photos back into the "new but different" one you made and make it active.

Apparently this cleans whatever metadata was being held out of the old migrated one's setting and cleans this issue up.

This took a lot of experimentation, but appears to work.

So far - no more random black screen after phone has been idle.

I think I figured this out - seriously.

My old wallpaper (pre- iOS 16) somehow got linked to the 'Do Not Disturb' focus. (I don't think I did this)

When my phone would lock, it would try to turn on my old wallpaper, but since it was linked to the DND focus, it would put the phone into DND mode, which for some reason would put up the black screen - at least that is what I believe was happening. So, I decided to try and un-link the DND focus from my wallpaper.

If you long-press on your lock screen, it will bring up the various wallpapers and the assigned focus will be at the bottom of each. Where my original wallpaper used to be (the far left spot), there was the black screen, and the focus at the bottom said "Do Not Disturb". I pressed on the "Do Not Disturb", and it brought up all of the various focus modes(Do Not Disturb, Personal, Sleep, etc.). The "Do Not Disturb" was selected. I tapped on that to unselect it. Then the focus mode at the bottom just shows "Focus" - which means no focus is selected. This did it. I then locked the phone and voila! My old wallpaper is back, and it's not tied to a focus, and for now at least I don't have a black screen.

I hope this helps. Good luck!!

For What It’s Worth

Iphone 12, iOS

16.1.1. Constant Lockscreen Blackscreen (LSBS). Trying to use my

“current” wallpaper (CWP) in SETTINGS , depicted as my Current

(and desired) Lock Screen Wall Paper (LSWP) did not last. LSBS on

every wakeup. What seems to have worked for me is, I found a copy

of my CWP in My Photos. I then added this photo as my LSWP by

touching and holding on the LSBS till the LS options came up. Then

using the “add new” option I added the copy from My

Photos. For two days, no BlackScreen and I have my old wallpaper

back! Maybe the lookup to wherever the CWP resided got screwed up

during upgrades and this made a new lookup. Time will tell.

On your Lock Screen tap and hold until you get the customized wallpaper screen. On your preferred wallpaper look to see if it has a DND icon at the bottom. Tap this and deselect. Then you can go to the other wallpapers (you may or may not have chosen to load there) and swipe up. You will see a trash can. Tap it to delete. If it tells you that you need a default that is not connected to a DND mode, check your other wallpaper to see if you did indeed deselect the DND icon. I don’t k ow how mine became linked to DND mode but, for me, that was the problem.

I upgraded to IOS 16.2 and had the same issue as everyone else, i.e. black screen where my wallpaper should have been. Now I've successfully managed to get my wallpaper back, but only once I'd worked out how IOS16 now manages wallpaper in pairs. Totally different to how we selected lock screen and home screen backgrounds before.

So, in wallpaper option in 'settings' I added my photo as a new wallpaper. It then shows the same photo twice, i.e. a pair. The first photo represents the lock screen wallpaper and the second one in the pair is the home screen wallpaper. The second one appears blurred by default.

Then I long pressed on 'customise' button at the bottom of the photo. Once you release your press, the photo appears with some options to change things. Depending on which photo you 'customise' you will get different options. If you 'customise' the second photo in the pair i.e. your home screen wallpaper, you can deselect 'blur' and also select a different photo for the home screen.

Once you're done editing, it should automatically select that wallpaper pair as 'current'. If not, make sure you select 'set as current' above the photo pair.

See the following article for more information on wallpaper pairs. It helped me to work out what was going on.

https://9to5mac.com/2022/09/14/ios-16-how-to-different-wallpaper-iphone-home-screen-lock-screen/

Hope this helps!

I agree! I had the same issue when I changed my profile to DND.

How I fixed it: from DND, I changed it to ‘personalized’ profile then I switched to a different wallpaper and screensaver (long press the black screensaver to show the different wallpaper and screensaver options you have set). i locked the screen, unlocked it then I went to change it back to the original one that I am using.

now it is no longer black and it went back to normal.

Please check your listed “Region” in Settings. Mine reset itself to “Angola” instead of the United States. Upon correcting this (which was a mere chance that I came across it), my “black”

This started happening on my 13Pro about a week ago, just out of the blue. I reboot, my normal lock screen is there, set the phone down and next time I pick it up, black screen. It was driving me nuts and to this forum.

Whats worked for me so far: long press on the lock screen and see my usual lock screen, another I didn’t create and one called “focus”. I deleted both the focus one and the random mystery one and my original seems to be sticking. Time will tell.

I discovered that the issues I was having with my Lock Screen picture not showing up were related to the Sleep Focus settings. Essentially, the iOS 16 Sleep Focus is set to black out the Lock Screen to minimize distractions, but that can be circumvented in the Focus settings.

Take a 'screen shot' of your favorite wallpaper image by bringing it up on the screen and snapping a photo of it. The select that new photo as your wallpaper. We did that several weeks ago and the new one is still working. Seems like there may be an issue with older picture formats that allows the wallpaper to go to black in the iOS updates. The newer photo apparently resolves that.

In our case the file format of the 'screen shot' is .jpg, file size is 72k. It might make a difference what size & file format your screen shot is. I can say that using our screen shot image worked and has continued to work for weeks. Before we did that, the old image could be used as wallpaper but then wallpaper would go to black after several minutes -- without fail. No other settings were changed. Some users have suggested additional settings to change that might affect this issue. Best of luck. Apple has not responded to this issue and most likely will not do so on this forum. I have never seen any discussions where they participated.

Forced restarting didn’t work or changing the wallpaper from within settings. I use the DND / sleep settings when I go to sleep and that seems to have gotten it stuck in sleep mode. I went to the sleep mode settings and switched it off and on, then cleared it out of sleep mode, and that worked!

I had the same issue recently after upgrading it to 17.1.1. Initially I thought it was caused by photos that I have deleted from the library but they are still used as screen lock. But after I deleted the screen locks and wallpapers and added new ones from existing photos, I still had the same issue.

I think, as you suspected, there is some interaction between the Focus and screen lock. After I deleted the sleep focus, the screen lock photo appeared again.