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Wallpaper Engine is a popular live background tool that's making its way from Steam to Android
It will be free-to-use, but to take full advantage of it, you'll need the Windows program
Google offers a few live wallpapers, but if the pre-installed selection on your phone just doesn't cut it, you need to look into other alternatives. These could soon be joined by a gaming community favorite — Wallpaper Engine has just announced that it's in the process of creating an Android app.
Google's Pixel live wallpapers now support Material You theming
Just make sure you've updated to the most recent beta
Android 12 brings a fresh look to your smartphone, thanks in large part to Material You. Google's new dynamic themes add a splash of color to your home screen, your browser, and even your keyboard. We're quickly approaching Android 12's stable release, with some of the last bugs getting ironed out. Material You finally supports Google's assortment of live wallpapers with a new update to the Pixel Live Wallpaper app.
35 of the best Android apps released in the last year
A hand-picked selection of fresh and noteworthy Play Store applications
The Play Store doesn't always make it easy to discover new and exciting apps for your Android device, and so I've taken the time to collect the best apps released on the Play Store in the last year, newly updated for 2021 with eight new listings. This way, everyone can see what they might have been missing out on. Today's list is comprised of 35 interesting, unique, or just flat-out useful titles that are definitely worth checking out. So if you're on the hunt for new and exciting apps to load up on your favorite Android devices, this roundup has you covered.
Google Photos lets you set a live wallpaper of your cool — or random — memories (APK Download)
For the adventurous ones only
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Every time I open the wallpaper picker on my phone, I wonder why it doesn't let me choose a local folder or a Google Photos album as a source of pics to cycle through on my homescreen. While that functionality has yet to be added, a new integration between Photos and Android's wallpapers is live now, but it only takes input from your Memories, leaving you at the mercy of Photos' AI algorithm and what it deemed worthy of being a "Memory."
How to install the OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 theme on your phone (APK Download)
All aboard the hype train
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The OnePlus 8T Cyberpunk 2077 Edition may be limited to China, but that shall not stop you from experiencing its theme on the phone you already own. @linuxct is back at it with ports that works on any handset running Android 8 or higher. Here are a few APKs you'll need to become a samurai.
Here's how to get the MIUI 12 Faraway Rings live wallpaper on any Android 8.0+ phone
You can choose to view Saturn's rings vertically or horizontally
When MIUI 12 debuted around three months ago, we published a post about a few of its "super" wallpapers being ported to other Android devices. The developer who ported the others, "linuxct" on XDA Forums, has now ported another MIUI 12 wallpaper. This one's called Faraway Rings, and as you might be able to guess, it depicts Saturn's rings.
Here's how to get the Pixel 4a's Eclipse live wallpaper on any phone
If you like bluish gradients, this is your wallpaper
It's pretty common for wallpapers from the latest phones to be ported to others, and the Pixel 4a is the latest subject of this. A developer on the XDA Forums by the name of Pranav Pandey has ported the 4a's Eclipse live wallpaper, and we have the download over at APK Mirror.
Xiaomi MIUI 12's 'super' wallpapers have been unofficially ported for other phones (Update: Individual links)
The amount of animations might be too damn high for a lot of people, though
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Xiaomi introduced the latest iteration of its Android skin MIUI 12 last week. Along with a slew of UI and privacy improvements, the company also showed off new planet-themed "super" wallpapers. As XDA Developers reports, their forum member linuxct has already extracted three of them and made them compatible with most phones running Android 8.1 or above, including Xiaomi devices thanks to a package name change.
Now that Christmas is over and the new year is about to begin, it's time to check out the best Android apps released in 2019. So if you recently received a new phone, tablet, or Chromebook that runs Android, you may be looking for a few quality apps to push your new device to its limits. This is why I've painstakingly hand-picked 30 of the (in my opinion) best apps of the year. I've tried to select an assortment of titles that should interest a wide selection of readers, all while sneaking in a few lesser-known apps to round out the selection. On top of that, I've also selected the best live wallpaper of the year as well as the best WTF app of the year, both of which you'll find at the bottom of today's list. So without further ado, here are the best Android apps that were released on the Play Store in 2019!
Google's Pixels come with some pretty snazzy "live" wallpapers that respond with parallax and motion effects to your touch and phone orientation, and the aptly-named application that controls these live wallpapers on the Pixel 4, called Pixel Live Wallpaper, has just appeared on the Play Store. Unfortunately for folks hoping to emulate the Pixel experience, this official app is for Pixel 4 and 4 XL only.
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- Google officially announced this experiments program as an open platform for designers and developers to submit ideas and try new things. Resources to get started are provided, plus the different apps are also open-source and available on GitHub.
Google isn't slowing down its Digital Wellbeing efforts. A little more than a year after its release, the app has matured with new features, parental control integration, Chrome browsing monitoring, and has become mandatory for all Android devices going forward. That isn't stopping Google from testing new angles that could help you curb your screen time and better manage your phone usage. To that end, the Google Creative Lab has released five new experimental wellbeing apps.
Now that Christmas is over and the new year is almost upon us I thought it would be prudent to compile the best apps of 2018 into a roundup before the year is officially over. So if you happened to have received a new phone, tablet, or Chromebook that runs Android OS, you may be looking for a few quality apps to push your new device to its limit. Every application in this list has been painstakingly hand-picked by yours truly, and they're all arranged by price for easy navigation. Heck, there were so many quality apps released this year that I've even included an honorable mentions list at the very bottom of the page. So without further ado, here are the best Android apps released in 2018!
Muzei, a much-loved live wallpaper app made by Google employee Roman Nurik, has just been updated. There was a long gap in which Muzei didn't see too much in the way of updates, which had me concerned for a while. But, between the one back in February and today's, things look to be picking up.
After over a year, Muzei is getting an official update. With Ian Lake taking over the reins, v2.3 brings a host of new features that Muzei users have been wanting for a long time. I don't want to spoil too much before we get into the changelog, so without further ado, let's dive in.
We've featured RichFace in our Android Wear roundups quite a few times already, but so far, we haven't had reason to talk about the designer/developer team beyond that. That changes today with the release of their first non-Wear app on the Play Store. It's a Live Wallpaper, so we're still in customization territory, but it's definitely an interesting one.
Google Creative Lab has released a few apps thus far that are described as "Android Experiments." Apps like Lip Swap were just for fun, but Meter is theoretically useful, and that's not something you can usually say about a live wallpaper. Meter shows you your signal strength, notification count, and battery life using colorful geometric shapes.
When some one has taken the time to design a live wallpaper that can semi-convincingly replicate the look of ice cubes floating in artificial water, you just don't let that time and experience go to waste. You channel it into another project. So Asus is rebooting its MyWater live wallpaper with a sequel, MyOcean.
Countless people out there have surely checked out Asus tablets in department stores around the world and walked away thinking, "I wish I could have that." You would think they were talking about the hardware (especially considering how cool the original Asus Transformer was at the time), but instead, they had their eyes set on the spiffy live wallpaper being used to show off the device. Lucky for them, Asus has now released the animated MyWater wallpaper into the Play Store and opened it up to competing electronics.