How to add wallpaper in Messages on iOS 26

When Apple released iOS 26 in Septemberyour company gave iPhone Ability to customize chat backgrounds in messages. Chat backgrounds can add a personal and fun touch to messages. They can give you a visual ID for each thread so you can easily see if you’re messaging the right person or group, too.

With this new feature, you can use your own photo as the wallpaper, choose one of Apple’s pre-made wallpapers, or create a unique wallpaper if you have an iPhone with Apple Intelligence technology. Just know that if you add a wallpaper to a chat, everyone in that chat will see it. So choose carefully.

Here’s how to change the chat background in Messages on iOS 26, and what you need to know about the feature.

How to add and change chat background in messages

1. It opens Messages.
2. Tap Chat with a saved contact.
3. Tap either the person or group name near the top of the chat.
4. handle Backgrounds.

You’ll see up to seven options near the top of the wallpaper list: None (default), Portrait, Color, Sky, Water, Aurora, and Stadium on Apple Intelligence-enabled iPhones.

Color, sky, water and twilight are all abstract live wallpapers. Clicking on any of them also gives you multiple filters you can choose from. For example, clicking Sky gives you the options of Dusk, Haze, Sunset, and three other filters.

If you click Image, you can choose any image in your library as your wallpaper. After selecting an image, you can crop it to better fit your screen or apply a filter. When you’re happy with the background, tap the check mark in the top right corner of your screen, and the image will become the background for that chat.

The pitch option opens Photo playgroundApple’s AI-powered image creation tool, and therefore only available on Apple Intelligence iPhones. You can describe an image by typing a description in the text box at the bottom of the screen, or you can choose different suggestions and themes that Image Playground offers. Once you’ve created the Playground background you want, click the check mark in the upper right corner of your screen. You will then be taken to a new page where you can apply a filter to the background if you want. Then tap the checkmark in the upper-right corner of your screen again, and that image will be your chat background.

Below all of these options is a suggestions section. These suggestions are mostly filled with photos and the Image Playground option on specific iPhones. Clicking on any photo suggestion takes you to the same menu where you can resize the photo or add a filter to it before accepting it. Clicking on the Image Playground option opens that menu – oddly enough, this is both a suggestion and an option, and they don’t seem to do anything differently.

If you don’t like any of these options, or are tired of them, you can always remove the background by choosing the default option, None.

Be aware that if you add, change, or remove a chat background, other people in the chat will see that change. So, it might not be a good idea to make your family chat background a photo of you swinging.

And don’t forget that you can only add or change chat backgrounds with people you have saved in your contacts. Otherwise you won’t see Backgrounds The option mentioned above.

Do I have to choose a background for every conversation?

No, if you choose a background for one chat, it will not be transferred to any other chats. So a chat with your parents might have a picture of your graduation as the background, and a chat with your siblings might have a picture of you giving them Noogie as the background.

This can serve as a good visual cue to help you keep track of who you’re talking to. For example, you and your spouse may have a chat background of hearts. If you’re not paying attention and you enter the chat and don’t see your heart background, you know you shouldn’t text that person and ask them to pick up toilet paper at the store on their way home.

Likewise, if you have backgrounds for most of your group chats and you receive a message from a chat without a background, you know you should double-check who’s in the chat so you don’t boldly announce to strangers that you survived a bathroom trip without toilet paper.

For more iOS news, here’s what to know about it iOS 26.4 and iOS 26.3. You can also check our website iOS 26 cheat sheet For other tips and tricks.