How to turn GIFs into a wallpaper for your Apple Watch

Take your Apple Watch wallpaper to the next level

by Vjeran Pavic

Oct 23, 2019, 5:26 PM UTC

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Photo by Vjeran Pavic / The Verge

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While looking for some new and interesting wallpapers for my Apple Watch, I came across a Reddit post showing Apple Watch wallpaper that had been created from a GIF — and I simply had to create some of my own. Mostly because a) Apple’s default time lapse wallpapers felt a bit boring, and b) Live Photos I shoot with my phone aren’t as interesting as some of the glitch art you can find online.

The process is very simple — you’re basically converting a GIF into a Live Photo. It does take a few steps to get it to work just right. Bear with me, though. I promise it’s worth it.

Go to the Apple Store and download an app that lets you turn GIFs into Live Photos. You can use a popular app like Giphy which not only has a lot of GIFs available, but now has a built-in option to save its GIFs as Live Photos. You can, of course, also use your favorite GIF app.
Find a GIF or a Live Photo you want to use as your Apple Watch wallpaper and save it to your Photos app.
Once you save the photo, go to your Photos library, select your newly saved Live Photo, and hit “Edit” in the top right corner.
Make the last frame of the Live Photo your key photo.

Select your saved photo and hit Edit.

Make the last frame your key photo.

Go to the Watch app on your iPhone in order to create a new watchface based on a photo.
Select the second tab named “Face Gallery,” then scroll down until you reach the Photos section. Under “Content” select “Photos.” That will enable you to pick a specific photo instead of a whole album. Pick your desired Live Photo there.
Lastly, add the watchface to your watch and test it out.

Use the Watch app to create a new watchface.

Add your photo to the watchface.

Note that if the animation isn’t working properly, it probably means that the animation is too long. In that case you can easily trim it using your favorite editing app.

Also, be aware that some GIFs will work better than the others. For example, as I played around with it, I found that Live Photos that have 42 frames, and GIFs with a lot more movement, like fireworks or lightning, all worked better for me.

And that’s it. Enjoy!

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