iOS 16.1 Lock Screen Wallpaper Display

I have the iPhone11Pro and the same thing happened I believe with the update to iOS16.0.2, as of iOS 16.1 the issue remains. Everyday my 7+ year old wallpaper disappears and both the home screen background and the lock screen become completely black.

I think this was caused by a faulty migration of the background settings between iOS versions.

First I decided to recover the original wallpaper image by following a series of complicated steps. The image is store as a .cpbitmap file, which I believe is an Apple proprietary image format used in iOS and iPadOS. This is what I did in case anyone is curious. Without ever deleting my current wallpaper (even if not showing in the main screen, it still appeared on the Settings app). Instructions using Windows 11 2H22:

1. Using iTunes make a full backup of your iPhone
2. Download, install, and run iExplorer on a Sandbox instance
3. Copy the main plist and manifest files to a folder inside Sandbox
4. Tell iExplorer to open that folder as the iTunes backup location
5. Insite iExplorer look for Home > Springboard and then make note of the path for "LockBackground.cpbitmap" and OriginalLockBackground.cpbitmap, it can be "86" or "7c" or something else -- I had these two files, perhaps you will have more or less files, but at least the one
6. Go back to your iTunes backup and copy just the two alphanumeric folders into the same folder inside Sandbox
7. Tell iExplorer to export the .cpbitmap files and copy those from the Sandbox back to your desktop
8. Open your browser on https://cpbitmap.github.io/ or https://www.dcode.fr/cpbitmap-format
9. Upload and convert to PNG, JPG, or TIFF
10. Using iTunes, Dropbox, or even emailing to yourself, send the photo back to your phone and set it as a background

I hope it works for you.

Having the same problem with 11 pro on ios16.1, black or greyed out screen even after a hard reset or setting an image as wallpaper....ugh

...

That seems to be working for now.

This seems to be working for me as well, at least for now. Thanks

Yes, and I'm sure it will continue to work right up to the point where it doesn't. That's the definition of random. Unless there has been a silent update the problem still exists, it just hasn't occurred recently.

That said, it also seems to be working for me, and, I'm sure, will continue to do so until it doesn't.

I have the same problem since I installed ios 16.1: no lock screen wallpaper visible anymore after a while. After reboot the picture is there again for a while until it dissapear.

I didn't have this issue with iOS 16.0.3 (iPhone 14 Pro)

Well, I'm afraid I spoke too soon. I used the workaround proposed by @gestler and it worked for me.......for two whole days. It has now reverted to the black wallpaper again.

Does anyone know if Apple support staff read these forums?

This is an Apple forum, so perhaps someone is tracking these comments. I would guess that there is some critical point at which complaints here receive attention and begin to be worked on. Just a guess of course, but might I suggest other readers chime in if they have a similar problem?

OK, my latest update.

I connected support via chat on my PC and very basically, the support operator thought that my original update had a corrupted file.

He put my phone into recovery mode and then I downloaded 16.1, this time using iTunes. I have reinstalled the update and for the time being, it appears to be working correctly.

I will let you know if it is any different.

OK. One and a half hours it lasted.

Im going to reopen my support ticket tomorrow. Let’s see what the next answer is.

This is happening to me too. Like others have said, it comes back for awhile, then disappears again. Apple needs to be made aware of this. Has anyone reached out to Apple. Praying it will be rectified in a future software update?? Thoughts?

My ticket was escalated to a senior adviser. He basically told me to restore a backup from iCloud, which was made before the update to 16.1.

I do my backups on my PC using iTunes, so my only backup is from yesterday :(

Apparently, because there are millions of iPhone users, some will be expected to have a glitch of some kind.

Getting pretty fed up with the whole thing.

Same here. Two Days......... Never forget this is the same tech driving your cars and flying your airplanes.

SAME. Can you keep me updated with what the Senior Advisor says?