Customizing Your Android

You can customize your Home and Lock screens and system settings. For example, you can change the Home screen wallpaper (background) to a family photo and set a password to protect access to your device. Some popular options include:

Wallpapers

Those gorgeous Home screen background images are called wallpapers, and you can select from landscapes, seascapes, and scenes from Google Earth. You can even choose to display a photo of your own:

1. Open Settings , tap Wallpaper & style , then Change Wallpaper.
2. Tap My photos to choose a picture from your camera roll. Or, scroll down to see the categories, tap to open and view the images in each.
3. Tap on an image to preview. If you want to set it as your wallpaper, tap Ok  (bottom right), then choose if you want the image as the background for the Home screen, Lock screen, or both.

Screen timeout

Your screen will go dark when you aren’t using it to save battery power. You can change the timing in Screen timeout settings:

1. Open Settings , tap Display , then tap Screen timeout.
2. Choose a time period before your screen automatically goes dark.

Adding an emergency lock screen message

You can add a message, such as an emergency contact, on your locked screen:

1. Open Settings , tap Display .
2. Tap Lock screen, then Add text on lock screen.
3. Enter your message. Tap Save.

Accessibility—making your device easier to use

You can make the text and display larger, even increase the contrast to make your device easier to see. Go to Settings > Accessibility  and Settings > Display  and look for options that might make small screens look bigger! See our course on Android accessibility for more information.