Why Is My Wallpaper Blurry (Android)? (8 Causes, Fixes)

Setting wallpapers is one of the best ways to add some flair to your Android smartphone.

However, Android can be annoying when setting wallpapers, with all the cropping and changing the image quality.

These changes can lead to blurry wallpapers that aren’t what you expected.

Blurry wallpapers on Android devices can have multiple causes.

Read on to see why your wallpaper might be blurry and how you can fix the issue.

Why Is My Wallpaper Blurry (Android)? (8 Causes, Fixes)

1. Check the Device Settings

Android phones have options for both blurry and clear images as wallpapers.

Therefore, the first thing you should check is the wallpaper settings to make sure it’s set on clear.

To do this, go to the phone’s settings and find “display.”

Click on “wallpaper” and choose “clear image.”

You can swipe up the home button on some Android devices and check the blur meter on your screen.

Reduce the blur or turn it off.

It should solve your problem, but if it doesn’t, check the solutions below.

Some Android devices don’t have the “clear image” option in their settings.

If you’re sure the image quality is okay, download an app like Muzei, which helps you change your wallpaper settings.

Besides turning off the blur effect, you can choose to set degrees of blurriness.

This way, you can keep your wallpaper blurry, but the icons remain in the spotlight.

It also has live wallpapers that change every day.

After installing and activating the app, open it and tap on “set wallpaper.”

Choose the wallpaper you like, find sources on top, and tap on advanced.

Then, select your desired blur degree or turn it off to get a clear image.

If the box next to “apply blur on lock screen” is checked, uncheck it.

2. Check If You’re Using a Live Wallpaper

As fascinating as live wallpapers look, they’re not the best option for battery consumption and media quality.

They’re animated images that make your background fancy, but most of them have a blur effect that you can’t change since the image comes with this feature.

Some of them blur, and when you touch the home screen, the image will be clear.

There’s no way to fix this issue since it’s not a problem per se.

If you insist on choosing a live wallpaper, choose one that doesn’t blur or one with a non-animated background.

3. Check If the Image Is Compressed

Check the quality of the image you’re using as your phone’s wallpaper.

Image compression methods fall into two categories: lossy and lossless.

The lossy format compresses the file, but it may lead to the loss of crucial data, seriously degrading the image quality.

What’s more, you can’t undo the changes once you save the picture.

On the other hand, lossless compression doesn’t reduce image quality.

It only affects the metadata in the image.

If you don’t want to end up with a blurry image, don’t save it with a .bmp extension.

Save it as a .png file, and you’re good to go.

Alternatively, you can use .jpg files, which use lossy compression but cut the least significant details first.

This way, you’ll get a decent-looking image that isn’t too large.

If you’ve already over-compressed your image, you can’t fix the problem since the process is irreversible.

Download the image again and this time, make sure you save it as a .png file or apply less lossy jpg compression.

4. Compressions in Messaging Apps

Most messaging apps reduce image sizes by default to lower data consumption.

If you’ve downloaded the image from such an app, make sure it’s not compressed.

To check or change the settings:

Open the app.

Go to settings.

Find chat settings, locate and click on image size.

You’ll see several options, including best available, large, medium, small, and original.

The best option is “original” since it keeps the original image quality and doesn’t change the aspect ratio.

Other options alter the image quality in some ways, so they’re not recommended.

5. Check the Image Resolution

Sometimes you’ll get a blurry wallpaper, even if it’s a full HD image that hasn’t been compressed.

In this case, the main culprit is resolution.

That’s because of the unique way Android treats wallpaper.

Unlike iPhone, which has fixed wallpaper formats for all screens, Android extends the wallpaper to match all your home screens.

On an iPhone, you’ll have a single image that stays on the home screen every time you swipe across the screens.

If you have three screens, Android pans the image across all three.

That’s why the image has to be twice the screen resolution width.

Even if the image completely matches your screen resolution, Android still crops it to fit the Android home screen requirements.

Choose an image with the same height as your screen resolution and twice its width.

You could simply download an image of this size or edit it in editing software like Windows Paint.

There’s also another way to fix this problem.

Although Android doesn’t let you set a single wallpaper for each screen, you can use apps like FiveWallPapers to do this.

How to Check Screen Resolution

If the image and your phone screen resolutions aren’t the same, you’ll get a blurry wallpaper.

To check the screen resolution, follow these steps:

Settings > display > screen resolution

You can choose between three resolution options: low, high, and smart.

Make sure the screen and the image resolutions are the same for the best result.

Also, check the image’s aspect ratio and make sure it’s the same as that of the phone.

The standard aspect ratio is 16:9, but you may get other ratios depending on the device (e.g., 19.5:9 or 20:9).

When there’s a mismatch between image and screen resolutions, your phone stretches the image to fit the screen size.

That will make the image blurry because stretching reduces quality.

6. Try Restarting Your Phone

Sometimes when nothing works, simply rebooting the phone will help.

Push the power button for a few seconds and choose “turn off” and not “restart.”

After turning it back on, leave it for 20 seconds without tapping on the screen.

If you double-tap the home button, you’ll get a blurred wallpaper again.

7. Hardware Issues

Although rare, sometimes the culprit is a hardware issue caused by dropping the phone in water or on the ground.

In this case, you should take your device to a repair shop.

To make sure the issue is a hardware problem, do the following steps:

Check the phone for any water damage.

There’s a sticker under the battery compartment that shows the phone got wet.

It’s originally white, but any change in color is a sign of water damage.

If the accident just happened, dry all parts of the phone with a cloth and leave it in a warm place so that the water evaporates.

Don’t put it near a heat source, or it will get damaged more.

Wait for two or three days until it dries out completely, and then turn it back on.

Doing a soft reset may clear up the screen.

It doesn’t affect the data and just restarts the device.

Turn off the phone, take out the battery, and put it back after a few seconds.

Turn on the phone again.

If the issue persists, do a hard reset to restore the device to factory settings.

Note that a hard reset removes all the data from your phone.

Therefore, it is important to make sure to get a backup of all your essential data.

If the image is still blurry after the factory reset, your device has a hardware issue, and you should take it for a physical repair.

8. Make Sure Your Camera Is Okay

If the photos you take on your phone are blurry, but the downloaded pictures are fine, the camera may be the problem.

Smartphone cameras may take blurry pictures for different reasons.

Make sure the camera lens is clean.

Wipe the lens off carefully to make sure it’s grease-free.

Switch between photo modes to get the best quality.

For example, go from auto to beauty, and go back to auto.

If the phone takes out-of-focus pictures, this simple hack will help solve it.

A full camera cache may also cause this problem.

Find “camera” in “applications” and clear the cache.

This way, you’ll clear up your memory and may solve the underlying problem.

Even if you have taken blurry pictures before and want to use them as wallpaper, you can use some apps to unblur them.

Remini is one of the best apps available to help enhance your image quality in simple steps.

Of course, depending on the original picture, you can’t expect a complete recovery.

Best Apps to Set Wallpaper Images

One of the most annoying features of Android is that it forces you to crop your image regardless of your screen size.

Sometimes having the exact image resolutions as the screen resolution doesn’t work either.

Android crops the image and makes it blurry.

You can use some third-party apps to set your wallpaper images without cropping or reducing the image quality.

Here are the best ones:

1. Image 2 Wallpaper

This is a free app with a 4.3 rating on the Google Play Store.

It comes with two basic and advanced modes, with the latter having specific features such as cropping, applying effects, flipping the image vertically or horizontally, and resizing the image.

If you don’t want to resize the image, just use the basic mode and select fit to display width.

You could rotate the image and change the border color.

It supports Android tablets and smartphones and has many other features that make working with wallpapers super easy for you.