I don’t know about you, but part of the appeal of smartwatches is the ability to customise the look and feel of your wearable to look as unique as possible. All without looking too tacky, of course. But that’s entirely up to you. And with the Apple Watch, you have the ability to use a Live Photo as an animated wallpaper.
Thanks to a user on Reddit, I recently discovered that you can create an animated wallpaper from a GIF—which opens up a plethora of options. The best part of it is that the process is relatively straightforward, with no paid apps required to get it to work.
- First, find a GIF that you want to use. You can even create your own GIF from a video, using a web-based option such as Giphy to convert the video to GIF (you can also download the Giphy app from the App Store).
- Next, you’ll need to convert the GIF to a Live Photo. Again, you can use Giphy to do this.
- Save the GIF as a Live Photo to the Photos app on your iPhone.
- Head over to the Photos app, select the new Live Photo, and click “edit”.
- Select the final frame of your Live Photo as your key photo.
Now that you have the Live Photo you want, you’ll need to set it up on your Apple Watch.
- Open the Watch app on your iPhone, and select the “Face Gallery” tab. Scroll till the Photos section, and under the “Content” header, select “Photos”. Pick the Live Photo you downloaded earlier.
- All you need to do now is to add the watchface to your Apple Watch.
And that’s about it. You can play around with different animated photos, although it’s worth remembering that GIFs that are too long won’t work properly. Do let us know in the comments section if you’ve created a live wallpaper for your Apple Watch that’s worth sharing!
