Google Photos

Google Photos for Android adds live wallpaper that pulls randomly from your library

Ben Schoon | Dec 3 2020 - 6:47 am PT

While it’ll be paid to an extent next year, Google Photos is still perhaps the best photo service out there, thanks in part to its excellent features. Now, the Google Photos Android app is adding a live wallpaper that puts your memories on display.

Added to the latest Google Photos update, rolling out now and available for sideloading (via XDA), there’s a neat little live wallpaper. When applied, this wallpaper starts pulling photos directly from your library in an attempt to bring your memories to the forefront throughout the day.

When applied, the live wallpaper immediately starts pulling pictures from your Google Photos library, rotating them out any time you turn the screen off and back on. At least, that seems to be the intended functionality. In my brief testing, the rotation can be just a bit picky, but it works more often than it doesn’t. On a Pixel, the wallpaper can be applied to the homescreen or the homescreen and lockscreen simultaneously.

This live wallpaper is a great idea on paper, but in practice it doesn’t fully take advantage of just how good Google Photos is. The wallpaper just pulls from your library completely at random. Sometimes, that works out nicely. Other times… not so much. In any case, it’s a cool idea, Google just needs to add some filters to let users pick from albums, types of photos, or even the “highlights” story-like row usually at the top of the app rather than just pulling from the entire library as a whole.