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Didi ranks 31st on 2026 China Top 500 Private Enterprises as autonomous driving unit adds honorsQdrant Moves From Vector Search Into Physical AI After 365% Two-Year Revenue GrowthDiscord Begins Age Verification Rollout for All Users After Privacy BacklashECCV 2026 Opens in Malmö With Record 7,000 Attendees; Fei-Fei Li Team Wins Koenderink PrizeRobots Take On Open-World Tasks as Embodied AI Debate Turns to World ModelsUK to create National Centre for Information Defence, Burnham says
Products & Applications

Here Wallpaper Turns Maps of Beloved Places Into Wallpapers on iPhone, iPad and Mac

A developer's app, Here Wallpaper, turns maps of chosen streets, cities and coastlines into wallpapers, with desktop-layer support on Mac and Shortcuts-based switching on iPhone and iPad.

AI News Feed · 2026-09-23 13:08

The article, written by the app's own developer, says users open an editor, search for a place or start from their current location, then zoom in to fill the frame with intersecting streets or zoom out until rivers and coastlines dominate. Themes control the map's colors, while layers decide how much detail stays on screen; roads, buildings, water, parks, railways and airports can each be shown or hidden, so dense street textures can be kept or stripped back to make water and coastline stand out. For users without a place in mind, a Random Place option picks from a built-in list of cities and landmarks as a starting point.

According to the account, the app's search is constrained by Apple Maps' API. Devices set to mainland China appear to return only domestic locations, while devices on overseas system settings are not subject to that limit.

On Mac, the app inserts a layer between the system wallpaper and desktop icons so the map sits beneath widgets and icons, an arrangement the developer compares to Wallpaper Engine on Windows. Users can choose which display shows the map, have the theme follow the system's light and dark appearance, and turn on automatic rotation to a new random place when the device wakes. The Mac version also exports lossless PNG files.

iPhone and iPad cannot change the system wallpaper directly because of Apple's restrictions, the developer writes. Instead, users can save adjusted wallpapers to a favorites list and then use Shortcuts to read the image and set it as the system wallpaper; paired with personal automation, the image can be swapped by time or other conditions, such as a different saved map each morning. Users who prefer to change wallpapers by hand can export the image to the photo library and set it there.

Beyond the built-in themes, the app offers a custom theme editor for adjusting map colors, so the same location can be rendered in different styles without changing its composition or framing. The developer notes that built-in theme templates can be exported, handed to an AI for color suggestions, and imported back into the app.

The developer states that most of Here Wallpaper's map theme colors reference the open-source project Terraink, and that the app's early implementation drew on Terraink source code released under the MIT license before April 3, 2026. Project links and copyright notices are listed on the app's acknowledgements page. Planned additions include a true random location function that draws from land points worldwide, more map layer controls and more built-in themes.

The app requires iOS 26 or later, iPadOS 26 or later, and macOS 26 or later.