Some Android 14 beta users can now create their own emoji wallpapers
Google showed off only a few Android features during Google I/O 2023, but among them was the option to create and customize your own emoji wallpapers on Pixel phones. The feature has now started to roll out to those on Android 14 Beta 3, showing up as part of the Wallpaper & style settings. The wallpapers are enabled by a new app slowly becoming available on the Play Store called Emoji Workshop Wallpaper.
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The rollout was spotted by Google News on Telegram, which also managed to obtain and share an APK of the new app. We would recommend against installing this APK as it’s not from a verified source like APK Mirror, so if you’re curious, proceed at your own risk. On Android 14 Beta 3, you may have to restart your device and force-stop the Wallpaper & style app to get the new emoji wallpaper section to show up. It seems to be available pretty consistently for people running Beta 3 once the Emoji Workshop Wallpaper app is installed, though.
When everything works as expected, a new Emoji Workshop section appears in the wallpaper picker interface. Tapping it brings up a preview of a predefined wallpaper, with the option to pick your own emoji, patterns, and colors. You can also hit a randomize button and customize your interface from there. You can pick between 20 ready-made colors and five predefined patterns: Mosaic, Lotus, Stacks, Sprinkle, and Prism. All of them offer a slider that lets you tweak the size of the individual emoji. In our testing, we were able to use up to 14 emoji at a time.
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As previewed during I/O, tapping any part of your home screen, including icons, creates a ripple effect. There is a subtle animation when waking your screen, and another spinning or flipping animation when you unlock your phone, with the emoji basically falling or spinning into place, depending on which pattern you choose. When you plug your phone in, there is also a delightful Easter egg, with all emoji briefly turning into the lighting emoji before they flip back to your selection. When you switch to dark mode, your wallpaper colors are inverted.
Once you’ve set your wallpaper and you go back to its preview, it’s possible to turn off the live animations. There is also a share button, but right now, tapping it crashes the app. Some wallpapers can be edited while others can't, which might be a beta issue — but at least all the wallpapers you created are collected and readily available for use.
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We’ve been able to install the APK on Pixel phones running Android 13 and the Android 13 QPR3 Beta, but the emoji wallpapers don’t show up in the wallpaper selection. It looks like the new emoji wallpaper’s visibility is toggled by a server-side flag, so it’s possible that Google will keep this flip switched off for Android 13 phones until the (apparently delayed) June Feature Drop hits in stable. After all, the company announced that the emoji wallpapers would also come to Android 13.
At I/O, Google also announced that cinematic wallpapers would come to Android 13 phones later this year. On Android 14, you can additionally look forward to AI-generated wallpapers, allowing you to create anything you can put into words.
Source: Android Police
