So mesmerizing you may walk into a wall
The Android Operating System (OS) is known to give users the ability to personalize their smartphone’s interfaces. You can choose to activate built-in themes on your phone, install third-party launchers, icon packs, or set whatever image you want as your home screen and lock screen wallpapers.
While your usual wallpapers are already aesthetically pleasing, live wallpapers apps make your home screen look more extraordinary. Live wallpapers are images that are often animated and can react to gestures such as tapping or tilting of the screen.
In this article, we’ve listed the nine best live wallpaper apps for Android, providing brief feedback on their overall features and performance on a smartphone with Android 10 Operating System and 8GB of RAM.
1. Muzei Live Wallpaper
Muzei is a live wallpaper app that features different artworks with an option to display a new design each day. It’s simple, customizable, and available for both your lock screen and home screen. You can also adjust the blur, dimness, and grey of your wallpaper according to your liking.
The app features some artworks, such as Van Gogh’s Starry Night and Claude Monet’s The Seine at Vetheuil. Performance-wise, the app runs smoothly without draining your battery. Its interface is simple and straightforward.
One of the things that’s remarkable about Muzei is that it’s an open-source app. This means that you can actually access its source code and tweak it to add features if you know a little programming. You can access the code at code.muzei.co.
Download: Muzei Live Wallpaper (Free, in-app purchases available)
2. Paperland Live Wallpaper
Paperland Live Wallpaper gives you a cute, customizable paper cut-out scenery that looks like a diorama. What’s fun about this live wallpaper is that you can set the time of your background’s sunrise and sunset.
You can also use the automatic setting that derives the time and weather from your actual location. The weather information is powered by AccuWeather.
You can choose from the free themes in the app like Silent Night and Desert Migration. The Pro subscription, on the other hand, includes a lot more festive themes such as Christmas and Easter themes.
The live wallpaper’s animations are lag-free when applied as a home screen background.
Download: Paperland Live Wallpaper (Free, in-app purchases available)
3. Water Garden Live Wallpaper
The Water Garden Live Wallpaper app will give you the serenity of having a garden pond on your phone. With this interactive and relaxing app, you can customize the look of your pond and feed koi of different sizes.
A single tap on your screen will trigger a beautiful ripple effect on the water. A double-tap would let you drop fish food in the pond to feed the fish.
Despite the high definition and realistic animations, there is little to no lag experienced when using the live wallpaper.
Download: Water Garden Live Wallpaper (Free, in-app purchases available)
4. Forest Live Wallpaper
Forest Live Wallpaper is one of the live wallpaper apps for Android that can sync the wallpaper’s scenery with your weather and location in real-time. By default, you get a minimalist forest scenery with swaying trees and moving clouds.
You can customize the scene by changing colors, multisampling, manual weather, themes, and enabling the 3D parallax effect, allowing you to experience different animations when you tilt your device.
One downside of the app is that it is not supported on all devices, so if you’re interested in installing this app, you can try to do so to test if it works well with your phone.
Forest Live Wallpaper’s Pro version includes more amusing themes and events such as fireworks during the New Year.
Download: Forest Live Wallpaper (Free, in-app purchases available)
5. ASTEROID App by Maxelus.net
For astronomy lovers out there, this live wallpaper app is perfect for your Android phone.
ASTEROID by maxelus.net has an asteroid floating in blue space. You can swipe in any direction to see other sides of the celestial body or just tilt your phone to trigger the movement.
You can customize the asteroid type, asteroid color rotation, background, and background color. The app also has a static image mode that will display a new photo every 10 seconds. This is perfect if you’re not in the mood for a live wallpaper or want to minimize your battery consumption.
If you want access to more custom colors and asteroid models, you can upgrade to the app’s premium version.
Download: ASTEROID App (Free, premium version available)
6. 4D Live Wallpaper – 2021 New Best 4D Wallpapers HD
4D Live Wallpaper is one of the best live wallpaper apps for Android because of its variety of choices for home screen and lock screen. It has different collections of wallpapers with categories for 4D wallpapers, live wallpapers, or 4K wallpapers.
You can choose from anime, idol, tech, animal, games, and many more. The wallpapers have subtle animations that help create a nice depth illusion. You will experience little to no lag and battery draining while using this app’s wallpaper, too.
You can customize the wallpaper to be controlled by your smartphone’s sensors. Another cool feature is that you can use your personal video as a live wallpaper for your home screen and lock screen.
To unlock a wallpaper, you have to watch an ad that lasts for 15 seconds or more.
Download: 4D Live Wallpaper – 2021 New Best 4D Wallpapers HD (Free)
7. Live Wallpapers, Screen Lock, Ringtones – W. Engine
Walloop Engine’s Live Wallpapers are another one of the top live wallpaper apps for Android if we’re talking about the categories and diversity of designs — ranging from anime, games, vehicles, superheroes to minimal and quote designs.
Some of the designs also include high-quality sounds. They have ringtones available for use, too. You can apply these wallpapers to your home screen and lock screen.
To start using the app, you will be prompted to sign in. The wallpapers are unlocked with keys as their currency. If you’re not subscribed to the Premium version of the app, you need to watch ads to get keys.
Download: Live Wallpapers, Screen Lock, Ringtones – W. Engine (Free, premium subscription available)
8. Wave Live Wallpapers
Wave Live Wallpapers has a collection of vibrant and realistic designs for live wallpapers, keyboards, and call screens.
You can choose from their gallery and hashtags that serve as categories to pick a wallpaper in line with your artistic taste. You can choose among categories such as nature, animals, sports, art, and many more. You can also create your own wallpaper in the My Studio section. There are both wallpapers with Parallax 2D and Parallax 3D, touch-sensitive animated backgrounds, and video wallpapers. The designs you choose can be applied both to the home screen and lock screen.
To unlock other wallpapers, you have to pay gems. You can either purchase gems or watch ads to gain gems. Each ad gives you 30 gems. They also have daily rewards that help you gain gems. There are also wallpapers that can be unlocked by just watching one ad.
The app’s user interface is easy to use and works smoothly. The app developers also did a great job of optimizing the battery usage of the live wallpapers. The app pauses the video rendering while an app is running or when the screen is closed.
Download: Wave Live Wallpapers (Free, in-app purchases available)
9. ZENTALED Live Wallpaper
ZENTALED Live Wallpaper app is maxelus.net’s creation especially compatible with smartphones having an OLED display. Their live wallpapers are designed to look like light projection artworks with a dark background.
You can also access different models such as “Lion” or “Fanart Darth Plegius”. Additionally, their wallpapers are touch-sensitive and can be triggered by tilting your screen. You can also get more wallpapers by watching ads.
This app is perfect for people who like a cool and techy look and feel on their home screens. Its dark-themed wallpapers also help with battery usage optimization while maintaining a remarkable aesthetic.
Download: ZENTALED Live Wallpaper (Free, in-app purchases available)
Personalize Your Smartphone
Using live wallpapers, you can use your smartphone to explore your creative identity more conveniently. With the best live wallpaper apps for Android on our list, you can choose all kinds of live backgrounds that will suit your style. The better thing is that they’re all free to install, so you can take your time and change from one app to another to check out all their designs if you wish to do so.
Emma Collins is a freelance writer based in Croatia. She's been writing articles on Windows, Android, Mac, iOS, social media, gaming, and more as a tech writer for over four years. Before starting as a writer, Emma used to be an English Language Teacher and cultural ambassador in Hokkaido, Japan. Currently, Emma and her husband run a digital marketing agency while doing freelance writing on the side. Read Emma's Full Bio