Wallpaper size and resolution

· A note from this library

A tall 2K JPEG is a phone file first. Desktop is a crop, not a second master.

What we publish

Every wallpaper on this site is a JPEG in a tall portrait frame, typically 1448 × 2896 pixels. That is not Digital Cinema 2K: DCI’s 2K container is 2048 pixels on the long edge.[1] It is a phone-first master — enough pixels for a current lock screen at one-to-one or slight overscan, without shipping a 20 megabyte 8K plate you will never see. Consumer “4K” on a TV is usually 3840-wide UHD, which these portraits are not. Titles and page facts use 2K or the pixel count, not a 4K marketing word.

The browsing thumbnail is a smaller JPEG used in the grid. It is not a different crop of the art — same picture, fewer pixels. If you long-press a thumb and “save image,” you are saving the preview. Use the download control on the wallpaper page. That is the file we intend you to set.

Phones

A current iPhone or Android panel is taller than it is wide, and the system will zoom a wallpaper so there is no empty bar.[4][5] A 1448-pixel-wide master is wider than many logical CSS pixels and close to the physical pixel width of a lot of phones when you account for how the OS crops for parallax or always-on display. You may still see a slight pinch-to-fit. That is normal. Slide the image so the clock zone we described in the choosing guide sits under the clock, not under a flower head.

Foldables and inner tablets are a different shape. Use the same file; let the system cover, then check the fold crease. A landscape meadow or a horizontal brushstroke survives a fold better than a tiny centered face, which can land on the hinge.

Desktop and tablet

These files are not native 16:9 masters. On a monitor you will crop. The useful move is to pick a file that already has a wide band of one color — cream plaster, a lake horizon, a diagonal stroke — and pin that band to the screen. Windows and macOS both let you fill the display; they will discard the top or bottom of a tall file. That is fine. We would rather you crop a sharp 2K portrait than download a muddy widescreen fake.

Tablets in portrait can use the file as-is. Tablets in landscape behave like a short monitor. Preview before you commit if you use a home-screen grid on iPad; icons will cover the middle.

File size, compression, and screenshots

The downloads use JPEG, the ISO/IEC 10918 still-image codec, not a lossless plate.[2] Our files are usually a few hundred kilobytes to a little over a megabyte. That is small enough to keep dozens on a phone. If a file looks blocky after you set it, you probably saved a screenshot of the page or the thumbnail. Delete that and download again. Do not run a third-party “enhancer” that re-encodes the JPEG; you will add ringing around the brushstrokes we already put there on purpose.

We do not watermark the download. If you see a logo in the picture, it is part of the art or you are not on this site. Personal use only: set it on your devices, do not sell the file.

Why titles say 2K, not 4K

A title that says 4K while the facts line says 1448 × 2896 is a lie. We do not do that. The title, the download label, and the size line use the same 2K class as the JPEG you get. If those numbers say 1448 × 2896, that is what you get.

If you need a true 3840-wide landscape for a TV, this library is the wrong shop. These are phone portraits that you may crop. That limit is on purpose. It keeps files small and honest.

Sources

Studio notes about how we painted or cropped a file are ours. Claims about contrast, display modes, color psychology, and OLED wear cite the third-party sources below.

  1. Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) (2024). Digital Cinema System Specification — 2K container is 2048 pixels on the long edge
  2. ISO / IEC (1994). ISO/IEC 10918-1:1994 — Digital compression and coding of continuous-tone still images (JPEG)
  3. ITU-R (2015). Recommendation ITU-R BT.709 — Parameter values for HDTV (sRGB-family encoding on consumer displays)
  4. Apple Support (2024). Change your iPhone wallpaper (Lock Screen and Home Screen can be set separately)
  5. Google Support (2024). Change your Android wallpaper