What is the best size for a phone wallpaper?

Your own screen's resolution in pixels, in portrait. For an iPhone 17 that is 1206 x 2622, for a Pixel 11 it is 1080 x 2424, and for a Galaxy S26 it is 1080 x 2340. If one file has to fit many phones, 1440 x 3240 covers every phone in our table.

Is 1080 x 1920 a good phone wallpaper size?

It was, when phones were 16:9. Current phones are taller (19.5:9 or 20:9), so the phone enlarges a 1080 x 1920 picture until it fills the height and cuts the sides. On a 1080 x 2340 screen only about 82% of the picture's width stays visible.

What aspect ratio is a phone wallpaper?

Divide height by width. Recent iPhones and the Galaxy S26 come out at about 2.17 (19.5:9). Google lists the Pixel 11 and Pixel 10 as 20:9. Older phones such as the iPhone 8 were 16:9 (1.78).

How do I resize a picture to fit my phone wallpaper?

Crop it to your phone's ratio first, then resize to its pixel size in any photo editor: for an iPhone 17, crop to 1206 x 2622 or anything in the same shape. A picture smaller than your screen will look soft when the phone enlarges it, so start from the largest copy you have.

How big is a phone wallpaper in inches or cm?

A wallpaper is measured in pixels, not inches. The screen it fills is small: an iPhone 17 shows 1206 x 2622 pixels at 460 per inch, about 2.6 x 5.7 in (6.7 x 14.5 cm).

Phone Wallpaper Size: Pixels for iPhone, Pixel, Galaxy

The right phone wallpaper size is your own screen's resolution in pixels, held upright: 1206 x 2622 for an iPhone 17, 1080 x 2424 for a Pixel 11, 1080 x 2340 for a Galaxy S26. When one file has to suit many phones, make it 1440 x 3240 pixels and keep the important part away from the top and bottom edges.

The tables below come from the phone makers' own spec pages. Below them: why the old 1080 x 1920 size gets cropped, and how to resize a picture you already have.

Phone wallpaper sizes in pixels

Apple, Google and Samsung list resolution in their technical specifications. Apple writes it height first ("2622-by-1206"); we turned every number round to width x height, the way you set up a portrait canvas.

Phone	Screen	Wallpaper size (px)	Height ÷ width
iPhone 18 Pro, 17 Pro, 17, 16 Pro	6.3 in	1206 x 2622	2.17
iPhone 18 Pro Max, 17 Pro Max, 16 Pro Max	6.9 in	1320 x 2868	2.17
iPhone Air	6.5 in	1260 x 2736	2.17
iPhone 17e, 16e, 14, 13	6.1 in	1170 x 2532	2.16
iPhone 16, 15, 15 Pro, 14 Pro	6.1 in	1179 x 2556	2.17
iPhone 16 Plus, 15 Plus, 15 Pro Max	6.7 in	1290 x 2796	2.17
iPhone Duo, inner folding screen	7.6 in	1878 x 2670	1.42
iPhone Duo, outer screen	5.4 in	1398 x 2034	1.45
Pixel 11, Pixel 10, Pixel 10a	6.3 in	1080 x 2424	2.24
Pixel 11 Pro, Pixel 10 Pro	6.3 in	1280 x 2856	2.23
Pixel 11 Pro XL, Pixel 10 Pro XL	6.8 in	1344 x 2992	2.23
Galaxy S26	6.3 in	1080 x 2340	2.17
Galaxy S26 Ultra	6.9 in	1440 x 3120	2.17

Samsung's newsroom spec table lists the Galaxy S26+ as a 6.7-inch QHD+ screen, the same class as the Ultra. Older iPhones are on Apple's compare page too: the iPhone 8 and SE (2nd and 3rd generation) are 750 x 1334, the iPhone 11 is 828 x 1792.

If your phone is not here, search for its name plus "tech specs" on the maker's own site and look for "resolution". On a Samsung Galaxy, Settings > Display > Screen resolution is where Samsung's S26 help page says you choose the resolution the phone runs at. Make the wallpaper for the highest setting and it stays sharp at the lower one too.

Phone wallpaper size ratio: why 1080 x 1920 gets cropped

The ratio is height divided by width. A 1080 x 1920 image is 16:9, or 1.78. The phones in the table are 2.16 to 2.24: Google calls the Pixel 11 screen 20:9, and the iPhones and Galaxy S26 work out to about 19.5:9.

A phone fills its screen with no bars. So it enlarges a short picture until the height fits and cuts off what spills over the sides. Put a 1080 x 1920 picture on a 1080 x 2340 Galaxy S26: the phone scales it up by 2340 ÷ 1920 = 1.22, the picture becomes 1316 pixels wide, and 236 of those pixels fall off the edges. You see about 82% of the width. A name or a pattern near the sides is gone, and the picture is a little softer from being enlarged.

Going the other way is fine. A picture that is taller and narrower than your screen loses a strip at the top and bottom, which is easy to plan for.

One wallpaper size for every phone

If you make wallpapers for other people, or own two phones, you want one file that fills them all. Here is how we worked it out from the table above:

The widest screen in the table is 1440 px (Galaxy S26 Ultra). Make the file at least that wide, so no phone has to enlarge it.
The tallest shape is the Pixel 11 at 2.24. Make the file a touch taller than that: 1440 x 3240 is 2.25.
On a 19.5:9 phone the file is scaled to the screen's width and the extra height is cut: 1440 x 2.17 = 3120 px are shown, so 120 px go, about 60 at the top and 60 at the bottom.
On a 20:9 Pixel almost nothing is cut.

So keep anything that matters out of the top and bottom 2% and away from the very sides, and one 1440 x 3240 file works on every phone in the table. The iPhone Duo is the exception: its inner screen is nearly as wide as it is tall, so it needs a file of its own.

How big is a phone wallpaper in inches and cm?

People search for this when they plan a wallpaper in a print-minded app, or wonder why a photo looks huge on a laptop and tiny on the phone. A wallpaper has no size in inches; it is a grid of pixels. The screen showing it does have one, and you can work it out from the spec page: divide pixels by the pixels per inch (ppi).

Phone	Pixels	ppi	Visible picture, inches	cm
iPhone 17	1206 x 2622	460	2.62 x 5.70	6.7 x 14.5
iPhone 17 Pro Max	1320 x 2868	460	2.87 x 6.23	7.3 x 15.8
Pixel 11	1080 x 2424	422	2.56 x 5.74	6.5 x 14.6
Pixel 11 Pro XL	1344 x 2992	486	2.77 x 6.16	7.0 x 15.6

The iPhone 17 numbers match Apple's own note: measured as a plain rectangle, the 6.3-inch screen is 6.27 inches corner to corner. If an app asks for a size in inches, ignore it and set the canvas in pixels.

Phone wallpaper resizer: fitting a picture you already have

You do not need a special app. Any photo editor that can crop to set dimensions will do, and so will a design tool where you start a custom canvas in pixels.

Find your phone's size in the table.
Crop your picture to the same shape. For an iPhone 17 that is 1206 wide by 2622 tall, or any crop with the same 2.17 ratio.
Resize down to the exact pixels if the crop is larger. Do not resize up if you can avoid it; start from the largest copy of the photo you have.
Save it as a JPG or PNG and send it to the phone.
Set it: on iPhone, Settings > Wallpaper > Add New Wallpaper > Photos. On a Pixel, touch and hold an empty spot on the Home screen, tap Wallpapers & style, then Change wallpaper, Choose a photo, Preview and Apply.

Apple's Customize screen and Google's Preview step both show the wallpaper before it is set, so check there that nothing important sits under the clock.

Lock screen and home screen: where things sit

Size is half the job. The other half is what covers the picture. The Lock Screen puts the time near the top, with widgets and controls around it; Apple's help page lets you change how the time is shown and add widgets in Customize. The Home Screen covers most of the picture with app icons and the dock.

Both systems let you use different pictures for the two screens. On iPhone, Set as Wallpaper Pair puts one picture on both, and Customize Home Screen lets you change the second one. On a Pixel you pick Lock screen or Home screen in the wallpaper picker. A common split is a detailed picture on the Lock Screen and a calmer crop or a plain colour behind the icons. Our phone wallpaper ideas are planned around that split.

Sizes for other screens in this section

Phones are one part of the phone and screen backgrounds section. Stream backgrounds and overlays work the other way round: a wide 16:9 canvas set by the streaming software, not by a phone maker. The numbers for Twitch and OBS are on our Twitch overlay size page. If you are sizing printed art for a wall rather than a screen, see wall art sizes, where pixels per inch matter for the opposite reason.