How to Delete Wallpaper on iPhone (Lock Screen Gallery)

Since iOS 16 every wallpaper you set stays in a gallery on the Lock Screen. That is handy for switching, but after a few months the gallery fills with old photos, test wallpapers and duplicates. iOS has no Delete button in Settings for them; the delete action is hidden behind a swipe on the Lock Screen itself.

Here is how to delete a wallpaper on iPhone, how to remove a single photo from a shuffle, and what deleting does and does not touch.

How to delete a wallpaper on iPhone

The steps are the same on every iPhone running iOS 16 or later, from an iPhone 8 to an iPhone 17.

1. Unlock without leaving the Lock Screen. Look at the phone for Face ID, or rest a finger on Touch ID, until the padlock at the top opens. Do not swipe up.
2. Touch and hold an empty part of the Lock Screen. The screen shrinks into the wallpaper gallery, with Customize and a plus button at the bottom.
3. Swipe left or right to the wallpaper you want to delete.
4. Swipe that wallpaper up. A red trash button appears under it.
5. Tap the trash button, then Delete This Wallpaper.

Repeat for every wallpaper you want to remove. When you are done, tap the one you want to use so it becomes active, and press the side button or swipe up to leave the gallery.

If holding the Lock Screen only shows the passcode screen, the phone was not unlocked. Wait for the padlock to open first. If nothing happens at all, press a little longer and make sure you are not touching a notification or a widget.

What deleting a wallpaper removes, and what it keeps

In the gallery, a Lock Screen and its Home Screen are one item, so deleting it removes both at once. Anything attached to that Lock Screen goes too: its clock font and colour, its widgets and its link to a Focus.

Your photo is not touched. iOS keeps its own copy of every wallpaper, so the original stays in the Photos app, and the opposite is also true: deleting a picture from Photos does not remove a wallpaper made from it. To get rid of both, delete the wallpaper in the gallery and the photo in Photos separately.

Apple's own wallpapers, such as Astronomy, Weather, Emoji and the Collections, cannot be erased from the phone. If you delete one from your gallery, you can add it again any time with the plus button.

Celadon Haze4K · PhoneLilac Hush4K · PhoneApricot Dusk4K · Phone

If you are clearing the gallery to start again, soft pastels like Celadon Haze, Lilac Hush and Apricot Dusk make a calm base set that keeps the clock readable.

How to remove only the Home Screen wallpaper

A Lock Screen always comes with a Home Screen, so there is no way to have a Home Screen with no wallpaper at all. You can make it plain instead:

1. Open the gallery as above and tap Customize on the wallpaper.
2. Choose the Home Screen preview.
3. At the bottom, pick Color for a solid colour, or Blur to soften the Lock Screen picture behind your icons.
4. Tap Done.

A solid black colour is the closest thing to no wallpaper, and on an OLED iPhone it is also the darkest. If you want a different picture rather than none, our guide to a different Lock Screen and Home Screen wallpaper shows how to pair them.

Remove one photo from Photo Shuffle

A Photo Shuffle wallpaper rotates through a set of pictures. You do not have to delete the whole wallpaper to drop one of them.

1. Open the gallery and tap Customize on the shuffle wallpaper, then choose the Lock Screen.
2. Tap the photos button in the bottom-left corner to see the set.
3. Select the pictures you no longer want and remove them, or add new ones.
4. Tap Done.

If iOS picked the photos for you from a category such as People or Nature, switch the shuffle to photos you choose yourself. That stops unwanted pictures from coming back.

Unlink a wallpaper from a Focus

A Lock Screen can be linked to a Focus, so it appears every time Work or Sleep turns on. If a wallpaper keeps coming back after you switched away from it, a Focus is the likely reason.

In the gallery, the linked Focus is shown as a button under the wallpaper. Tap it and choose None. You can also go to Settings, Focus, pick the Focus and change the Lock Screen there. Deleting the wallpaper removes the link as well.

Keep the wallpaper gallery tidy

The gallery has no folders and no sorting, so a short list works best. A few habits help:

• Keep three to five wallpapers. One for every day, one for work, one for night is enough for most people.
• Edit instead of adding. To change the clock or widgets, tap Customize on the current wallpaper rather than creating a near copy with the plus button.
• Use full-size originals. Screenshots and messenger copies are often too small and look soft, which is why many people replace them again a week later. Our fix for a zoomed-in iPhone wallpaper explains why.

Every Velpaper phone wallpaper is a 2160 × 3840 pixel original without a watermark, larger than any iPhone screen, so iOS only has to scale it down. Save one to Photos from the app or from velpaper.com and add it with the plus button, as in how to set a Lock Screen wallpaper on iPhone.

Rose Courtyard4K · PhoneStill Waiting4K · PhoneSoftly Passing4K · Phone

Rose Courtyard is warm and bright for the day, while Still Waiting is dark enough for a Sleep Focus. Two good wallpapers linked to two Focus modes keep the gallery short and still change on their own.