3 min read
You know GIFs are a prominent part of the public mainstream when one of the hottest debates of all time is over how the term is pronounced. They allow us to express ourselves in uniquely amusing ways over the Internet, and if you have ever wondered how to keep one as an alluring wallpaper to sweeten up your Android phone, you have come to the right place.
As it happens, the Android platform is flexible enough to allow its users to achieve something like that. In fact, you can even set an MP4 file as your wallpaper if that’s what you fancy, all thanks to a set of apps that will do the job for you.
It is worth noting that these are different from your traditional live wallpaper apps in the sense that they enable you to quite literally select any one of the billions of GIFs available at your disposal to customize your phone instead of giving you a limited number of moving picture options.
First off, let us take a look at how you can set a short video in MP4 or WebM format as your phone wallpaper. Such content will basically comprise of high-quality looping videos that feature few moving elements, so in a sense, they are not all that different from GIFs. There is certainly a term for them, however, and that’s a cinemagraph. You can check out more of them over here, and if you are interested in creating your own cinemagraphs, Gfycat is a highly convenient resource for you.
Let’s talk about the app that will allow you to set the video in question as your wallpaper in the first place. A simple search on Play Store will unearth a bunch of such apps, but the one worth using is Video Live Wallpaper, a neat little application that allows you to optimize your video before setting it, by enabling/disabling audio, background playback, and more.
Now, let’s talk about setting GIF wallpapers, be it Donald Trump stating something incoherent or a scene from Friends. The ideal app for this purpose is GIF Live Wallpaper, which is not only easy-to-use but also relevant to what you want to achieve without adding unnecessary details. You simply open up the app, choose your GIF from the storage picker, and proceed to resize it, reorient it or change its playback speed, before finally setting it as the wallpaper.
While it is true that these apps will end up consuming a significant chunk of your battery and ultimately decrease your smartphone performance, it won’t hurt to use them (at least temporarily) and watch your smartphone come to life in an almost magical way.
