iPhone Basics

Wallpaper and sounds

As you learned in our lesson on Security and General Settings, there are lots of ways to customize your iPhone. If you want to make your iPhone more personal, you might want to choose your own wallpaper or change the sound effects.

Remember, you can access Settings by tapping the icon on the Home screen. In this lesson, we will focus on:

• Wallpapers and brightness: From here, you can customize the iPhone's display.
• Sounds: From here, you can customize the iPhone's sounds.
  
  
  iPhone settings

Wallpaper and brightness

To change your wallpaper:

To make your iPhone more personal, you can add your own background wallpaper.

1. Tap the Settings icon on your Home screen, then tap Wallpapers & Brightness.
2. Tap the area under Choose Wallpaper.
   
   Changing the iPhone's wallpaper
   
3. Tap Dynamic or Stills to view the built-in wallpapers that came with your iPhone, or choose a picture on your device from the albums below. In our example, we'll tap Stills.
   
   Selecting an image library
4. Tap an image to open a full-screen preview.
   Selecting an image
5. Tap Set to apply the wallpaper—you can then set it for the Lock screen, Home screen, or Both. To exit the preview without changing your wallpaper, tap Cancel.
   Previewing and applying wallpaper

Setting the wallpaper from the photos app

If you're already looking at pictures in the Photos app, you can set any picture as the wallpaper without opening Settings. Simply select the picture, tap the Share button in the bottom-left corner, then select Use as Wallpaper.

Setting the wallpaper from the Photos app

Screen brightness

If you're having difficulty viewing your iPhone's screen, you may want to adjust the screen brightness. Decreasing the screen brightness will also help to save battery life. From the Wallpapers & Brightness settings, drag the slider to increase or decrease the screen brightness. You can also change this at any time by swiping up from the bottom of the screen to access the Control Center.

Adjusting screen brightness

Auto-Brightness automatically adjusts brightness for current light conditions using a built-in light sensor. Just tap the Auto-Brightness control to turn this feature on or off.

Sounds

The Sounds settings allow you to change the sound effects for different alerts (like a new text message or email), as well as your ringtone. You can also adjust the volume for these sounds, customize the vibration settings, and enable or disable system sound effects like keyboard clicks and lock sounds.

To edit sound settings:

1. Tap the Settings icon on your Home screen, then tap Sounds.
   Tapping Sounds
2. Customize the sound settings as desired. For example, you can choose a new ringtone or a new alert tone for text messages. Take some time to test different sounds and settings to find those you like best.
   Customizing the iPhone's sounds
   

You can also use your iPhone's side switch to mute or unmute all sounds.