Getting a background photo back into the photo album

An iPhone wallpaper cannot be directly saved back to an album in the Photos app or to your Photo Library simply because it was originally created using one of your personal photographs.

Setting a photograph as wallpaper does not create a separate, recoverable copy of the original image in your Photo Library. iOS uses the selected image to create and display the wallpaper, but the wallpaper itself is not a substitute for the original photograph.

If you have deleted or lost the original photograph, you will need to locate and recover it from another source.

You can try the following:

1. Photos app: Check the Recently Deleted album and your other photo albums.
2. iCloud Photos: Check whether the original photograph is available in iCloud Photos or on another Apple device signed in to the same Apple Account.
3. Backups: Restore the photograph from an earlier iCloud or computer backup, if available. Be careful: restoring a complete backup can replace newer data on your iPhone.
4. Shared copies: Ask friends or family members if you had previously shared the original photograph with them through WhatsApp, Messages, email or AirDrop.
5. Other storage locations: Check OneDrive, Google Photos, Dropbox, external drives or your Mac, if you use them to store photographs.

The important distinction is that a wallpaper and its original photograph are two different things. Do not assume that because the photograph is still being displayed as your wallpaper, the original image can be retrieved from the Photos app.

Once a photo is deleted, it goes to the recently deleted folder, where it stays for up to 30 days to give you the opportunity to restore it. If more than 30 days have passed and it's no longer there, even if it is being used as your iPhone Wallpaper, the actual photo no longer exists and can't be recovered.