MKBHD wallpaper app panels have been turned off

Technology YouTuber Marquis Brownleeor MKBHD, on Monday announced its phone wallpaper app Paintings The operation is turned off.

Fans had high hopes for Brownlee’s foray into app development, given his reputation as a sharp-eyed tech reviewer, and he has amassed more than 20 million followers on YouTube. He is so influential that some have blamed his commentary on humanistic artificial intelligence and Fisker Because those companies eventually fail (we think the real problem is that you shouldn’t bring this up 230 million dollars If you do not have a product). But since the time of Brownlee Launched panels In September 2024, the app had difficulty finding an audience of its own.

“We knew it was niche, but we made mistakes creating our first app, and in the end, we couldn’t turn it into the vision I had,” Brownlee said in the article. YouTube video not included. In a Blog postHe added that “the composition of the development team changed,” and he was unable to find the right collaborators to develop the app.

Brownlee was inspired to create the boards because when he posts video reviews of phones, tablets and computers, fans always point out how great his wallpapers and lock screens are. When it was first Announce In the app, he points out that if you type “Where is mkbhd…” into Google, one of the first suggestions is “…Get his wallpapers.”

The boards collaborated with artists to sell premium, high-resolution wallpapers, which users could access at a cost of $50 per year, or $12 per month (the artists received a share of these payments). But Brownlee couldn’t overcome the challenge of trying to create a paid market for something consumers weren’t used to paying for — it’s easier to pull a photo from the Internet, or take a cute photo of your dog.

Thanks to Brownlee’s standing, Panels ranked first on the iOS and Google Play photo app charts during its launch month. The app was unable to maintain this momentum.

According to app intelligence firm Appfigures, Panels has reached about 900,000 lifetime downloads and $95,000 in consumer spending across iOS and Android. Last month, the app received just 3,000 downloads and $500 in consumer spending, too low to rank in US app stores.

As revealed by Panels, users have downloaded more than two million wallpapers from the app.

Panels will start refunding users with active annual subscriptions when the app officially goes down on December 31, 2025. However, Panels’ blog post outlines ways customers can get their money back faster. After the app is shut down, Panels says all user data will be deleted, and the app code will be open source so other developers can build on it, if they wish.