Looking for old iPhone background wallpapers? Here’s where you can still download them.

Looking where to download old iPhone backgrounds? Look no further! We’ve rounded up a list of the best places to find Apple’s original iPhone background wallpaper – read on!

A History Of iPhone Background Wallpaper

Everyone loves to make their smartphone look unique and one of the best ways to do this is to set your own custom wallpaper on your iPhone’s home screen and lock screen.

But what many iPhone users in 2022 might not know is that the iPhone didn’t always support custom wallpapers. As a matter of fact, until 2010, with the release of iOS 4, the iPhone didn’t allow custom wallpapers on the home screen. The home screen pre-iOS 4 was simply black, though users could select a wallpaper for their lock screen before iOS 4.

With each iOS release Apple also usually updated its collection of wallpapers pre-installed in iOS. And sometimes they also got rid of older iPhone wallpapers too. This means that over time, users lost access to classic Apple iPhone wallpapers like the clownfish.

Thankfully, enterprising Apple fans have retained original iPhone wallpapers for posterity’s sake and now there are a few different places you can download these old iPhone wallpapers on the web.

Related: Looking for an older macOS? Here’s how to download old versions of macOS

Download Old iPhone Backgrounds: Wallpaper Access

A wallpaper website called Wallpaper Access hosts a collection of the top 47 old iPhone backgrounds and wallpapers. You can see them all and download them individually here.

Download Old iPhone Backgrounds: iDownload Blog

A fantastic Apple news website called iDownload Blog also hosts a collection of old Apple wallpapers. What’s great about this collection is the old iPhone wallpapers – of which there are 45 – have been optimized for the higher resolution of today’s iPhone screen. This means they should look too shabby on a 5.5-inch iPhone screen even if they were originally designed for smaller iPhones.

iDownload Blog’s collection is made up of a roundup of Twitter user @AR72014‘s collection, an Apple fan and graphic designer with a large Twitter following. Interested readers should follow @AR72014 for all kinds of cool graphics, concepts, and posts.

Download Old iPhone Backgrounds: Reddit

Finally, Reddit user Nucleam has a post with links to a Google Photos library of all iOS wallpapers. You can check out the entire collection here.

How To Change Old iPhone Background Wallpapers

If you want to change your current iPhone wallpaper to an older Apple one, the process is fairly easy. Here’s what to do:

On your iPhone, go to one of the sources above to find the old iPhone wallpaper background you want to download.
Tap the download link next to the wallpaper or just tap and hold on the wallpaper and then tap Add to Photos from the popup menu that appears. This will save the wallpaper in your camera roll.
Next, open up the Photos app on your iPhone and find the wallpaper you just saved.
Tap on the wallpaper to bring it up in the Photos app.
Tap the Share button.
Tap Use as Wallpaper.
Move and scale the wallpaper to your liking and then tap Set.
From the pop-up menu, tap to set the wallpaper as the Lock Screen background, the home screen background, or both.

And that’s it! You’ve now set your iPhone’s background to an old Apple iPhone background image.

And check out:

Michael Grothaus

Apple expert and novelist, Michael Grothaus has been covering tech on KnowYourMobile for the best part of 10 years. Prior to this, he worked at Apple. And before that, he was a film journalist. Michael is a published author; his book Epiphany Jones was voted as one of the best novels about Hollywood by Entertainment Weekly. Michael is also a writer at other publications including VICE and Fast Company.

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How To Download Old iPhone Backgrounds