Depth PaperGuide · iOS 27
iOS 27 wallpaper: what's new, exact sizes, and your own
Apple released iOS 27 on 2026-09-14. This guide covers what it changed for wallpapers, the exact wallpaper size for the iPhone 17 and 18 Pro models, and a small original gallery in the season's darker moods. Each wallpaper is a visible seed you can open in the maker and render at your phone's native pixels, in your browser.
Checked on 2026-09-23 against Apple's release announcement and published coverage of the release. Notes marked as beta reports come from this page's first check, made against the betas on 2026-08-09.
Where iOS 27 stands now
After a summer of developer betas, Apple released iOS 27 as a free software update.
Beta reports described new default wallpapers, including versions that respond to device motion. You will not find them here: Apple's artwork is Apple's, and this site does not host, trace or recreate any of it. The maker renders an original wallpaper at your screen's exact pixels, from a seed you can see, keep and share.
Apple's list of supported phones goes back to the iPhone 11 and the second-generation iPhone SE. The two generative wallpaper features below need a phone that supports Apple Intelligence, which is a much shorter list.
What iOS 27 changed for wallpapers
Extend Your Wallpaper. When a photo is cropped too tightly or doesn't match the phone's aspect ratio, Apple Intelligence generates matching detail around the edges so the image fills the Lock Screen. An image made at your screen's exact native pixels needs no extending, and the size chart and the maker give you one.
Lock Screen wallpapers from Image Playground. Apple's image generator can make Lock Screen backgrounds from a text description. This site's maker uses no AI and no prompt: your browser calculates the wallpaper from an integer seed and a palette, on any phone, and nothing is sent anywhere.
A compact clock layout. A new Lock Screen option shrinks the time to about the size of the date and moves it to the top of the screen beside the date, so more of the wallpaper shows. The whole image then has to hold up, including the area a large centered clock used to cover.
Adjustable Liquid Glass. A slider in Settings adjusts Liquid Glass elements, such as the clock, buttons and widgets, from ultraclear to fully tinted, per Apple. Toward the clear end your wallpaper shows through the glass, so the brightness of the area behind the clock decides how readable the time is. You can measure that area's contrast with the depth-effect checker.
A beta report. One developer beta added a Notification Center animation that lifted the wallpaper's depth-effect subject out as a floating cutout, and coverage of the next beta reported it gone again.
Exact wallpaper sizes for the iPhone 17 and 18 Pro models
iOS 27 changes no screen resolutions, so export at the same native pixels your phone shipped with. Each row links to the maker set to that model:
| Model | Native pixels | Released | Wallpaper preset |
|---|---|---|---|
| iPhone 17 | 1206×2622 |
2025-09 | Make one at 1206×2622 |
| iPhone Air | 1260×2736 |
2025-09 | Make one at 1260×2736 |
| iPhone 17 Pro | 1206×2622 |
2025-09 | Make one at 1206×2622 |
| iPhone 17 Pro Max | 1320×2868 |
2025-09 | Make one at 1320×2868 |
| iPhone 17e | 1170×2532 |
2026-03 | Make one at 1170×2532 |
| iPhone 18 Pro | 1206×2622 |
2026-09 | Make one at 1206×2622 |
| iPhone 18 Pro Max | 1320×2868 |
2026-09 | Make one at 1320×2868 |
The iPhone 14 through 16 families, which all run iOS 27, are on the full iPhone wallpaper size chart, each with its own preset. Older supported models, back to the iPhone 11 and SE, aren't charted: look up the native resolution in the model's tech specs and use the maker's custom size (240–4096 px per side).
The foldable iPhone Duo, announced the same day as the 18 Pro models, is not in the table. It has two screens, and the site's device table lists one screen per phone, so use the maker's custom size with the resolution Apple publishes for the screen you want to fill.
Make your own: five September-mood seeds
These five are original renders from this site's mesh-gradient engine, picked for the September release: dark grounds that keep a light clock legible, and warm and violet ranges that sit well in low light. They share a mood with the season and recreate no one's artwork, and none of them is an image file. Each card is a visible seed rendered live in your browser. Open one in the maker to change its seed, palette or device, or to export it at any listed phone's native pixels.
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Last light
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Low fire
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Smoke line
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Night meridian
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Held dark
Every card opens the maker set to the iPhone 17 Pro Max, whose 1320×2868 screen the iPhone 18 Pro Max shares. Switch to your model there and the export follows. The same seed, palette, point count and size render the same wallpaper again, though the PNG file's bytes can differ between browsers.
Setting up the depth effect
The lock-screen depth effect layers the clock behind your photo's subject. Your iPhone decides whether it happens by running its own subject segmentation on the photo, which a website cannot do for you. You can fix three things that stop it: an image smaller than your panel's native pixels, a subject sitting outside the zone where the layering happens, and a clock area too busy or too mid-toned to read.
Before you set a photo, run it through the depth-effect checker. It gives an exact resolution verdict for your model, overlays neutral labeled bands showing where the status bar, clock and widgets sit at that model's proportions, and measures the contrast of the image region behind the clock, all in your browser, with the photo never leaving your device. The checker's bands follow the standard layout with the large centered clock, so if you use the compact clock, read them as a guide to that layout.