iPhone Always On Display Wallpaper: Settings and Tips

Lock an iPhone with Always On display and the screen does not go black. The clock, the widgets and your wallpaper stay in view, only much dimmer. Whether the wallpaper stays is your choice: one switch in Settings shows it dimmed, or replaces it with plain black.

This guide covers what Always On does to the picture, where the switch lives, which iPhones have the feature, what it costs in battery, and which kind of wallpaper still looks good at a fraction of its brightness.

What Always On display does to your wallpaper

When you press the side button, iOS does not turn the panel off. It drops the brightness, lowers the refresh rate to as little as 1 Hz and keeps a quiet version of the lock screen on the glass. Apple calls it a dimmed version of your Lock Screen, and that is exactly how it looks.

Your wallpaper is still there, but darker and calmer. Bright areas lose most of their glow, colours look muted, and fine detail in the shadows disappears into black. The clock and widgets stay on top, also dimmed.

Turn off Show Wallpaper and the picture is gone: the screen becomes black with only the clock, the date and your widgets. Many people prefer this at night or on a desk, because the phone reads as off at a glance.

How to show or hide the wallpaper on the Always On screen

1. Open Settings.
2. Tap Display & Brightness.
3. Scroll down and tap Always On Display.
4. Turn Show Wallpaper on or off. Show Notifications on the same screen decides whether notifications appear on the dimmed lock screen.

The main Always On Display switch on that screen turns the whole feature off. Then the iPhone locks to black like older models, and the wallpaper only appears when you wake it.

The wallpaper itself is chosen in the usual place. If you have not set one yet, our step by step guide on how to set a lock screen wallpaper on iPhone walks through the editor, fonts and widgets.

Which iPhones have Always On display

Always On needs a display that can slow down to 1 Hz, so only some models have it. According to Apple, these iPhones support the feature:

The base iPhone 17 is the first standard model with the feature. For any newer iPhone, the quickest check is on the phone itself: if Always On Display appears under Display & Brightness, your model has it.

Does Always On display drain the battery?

It uses some power, because a lit screen always does, but Apple designed it to use little. The low refresh rate and the dimming do most of the work. The display also goes fully dark on its own when the iPhone:

• lies face down or sits in a pocket or bag,
• is away from your paired Apple Watch,
• is connected to CarPlay or used as a Continuity Camera,
• has Low Power Mode or the Sleep Focus turned on, or it is your usual bedtime.

If you want to save every bit of charge, turn off Show Wallpaper first. The iPhone screens that support Always On are OLED, where black pixels are simply switched off, so a black lock screen lights far fewer pixels than a bright photo. The same logic is why dark OLED wallpapers are the natural pick for this screen.

Wallpapers that look good dimmed

A wallpaper made for a bright screen is not always the one that survives the dim one. What matters is contrast and empty space.

Dark backgrounds with one bright shape

The best Always On wallpapers are mostly black or deep navy with a single light element: a moon, a lit window, a pale edge. When iOS dims the screen, the black stays black and the bright shape stays readable, so the picture keeps its idea. Lone Spire, one tower and a small moon on a black sky, is close to the ideal case. Moon Ledge works the same way with a full moon above the rooftops.

Lone Spire4K · PhoneMoon Ledge4K · PhoneLight Slits4K · PhoneMidnight Flow4K · PhoneLast Stop4K · Phone

Every wallpaper in this set is a 2160 × 3840 original, larger than any iPhone screen, so it stays sharp when iOS crops the sides.

Deep colour instead of pale colour

Dimming a pale pastel turns it into a flat grey sheet. Saturated deep colours age better: cobalt, indigo, petrol and plum still read as colour at low brightness. Moon Boat, a yellow crescent on cobalt blue, keeps both its colours on the Always On screen, and Indigo Passage keeps the warm light inside its arch.

A calm top for the clock

The clock and widgets do not move when the screen dims, and they lose contrast too. A busy area behind them makes the time harder to read twice over. Keep the top third quiet, or let the subject sit low in the frame. Our guide on choosing a wallpaper that keeps the clock readable covers this in detail, and the depth effect guide explains when a subject may overlap the time.

Getting the original file

Every Velpaper phone wallpaper is a 2160 × 3840 JPEG without a watermark, in the iPhone and Android apps and on velpaper.com. Browsing is free, and most phone wallpapers unlock after a short optional ad. Save the image to Photos, set it on the lock screen, then lock the phone and look at it from arm's length. That one glance tells you whether to keep Show Wallpaper on.