Vincent Van Gogh’s The Starry Night is the OG wallpaper.
I mean, just look at it:
The Starry Night lives in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, serving as an inspiration to wannabe artists.
If a 134-year-old painting can inspire 20-year-olds questioning their futures, your iPad's wallpaper should inspire you.
Here are 8 mostly free wallpaper sources where you can find some absolute banger backgrounds:
Unsplash
I would guess that a solid 74.3% of all pictures I use for my posts are from Unsplash.
There are some genuinely insane pictures on the site:
If you're a new iPad wallpaper connoisseur, Unsplash is a fantastic place to start out.
Pexels
Pexels is kinda like Unsplash.
One difference is that Pexel also has free stock videos. If you're into live photos, you could figure out a way to make a GIF-esque wallpaper (one of my friends used to have the Marvel intro as his phone's wallpaper).
I think this is the app (emphasis on think).
Life of Pix/Burst/ISO Republic
These guys are basically the cousins of Unsplash and Pexels.
They're mostly the same: all of the websites are free sources of stock photos, and some also offer stock footage.
They're all pretty cool. If you're looking for real-life wallpapers (like nature, the ocean, people, etc.), you should be able to find at least one solid photo from these sites.
If you can't, you're either more picky than my cousin or you don't know how to use the internet.
If you're looking for more abstract-y wallpapers, Reddit is a great source (woah, I can't believe I just said that).
From my very brief search, I found a few wallpaper-focused communities: r/wallpaper, r/wallpapers, and r/wallpaperengine
Here are some pretty cool wallpapers I found from these groups:
Discord
Like Reddit, Discord is another social platform where you can find some pretty nice backgrounds.
There are a few iPad-related Discord servers out there, though I personally am only part of two: this one and this one.
Both of these servers have "wallpaper" channels, where you can find some dope custom wallpapers.
Here's some of the stuff you can find in these servers:
Midjourney
I'm gonna be honest—past ChatGPT, I don't really know much about AI.
Based on what I've heard from my friends and the internet, Midjourney is kinda like ChatGPT but for images rather than text.
If that's the case, you could probably use Midjourney to generate whatever inspirational wallpaper you have in mind (just imagine seeing a giant picture of David Goggins, Spongebob Squarepants, and Luke Skywalker screaming at you every time you open your iPad 😂).
Procreate
If you can't find any good pictures on the internet and Midjourney is too "mid" for you (sorry for the slang, it's my inner Gen Z coming out), you can always go back to Van Gogh-ifying your iPad.
Creating custom wallpapers is really freaking fun. It helps harness your creativity through a relaxing outlet.
In my day-to-day life, I love drawing wallpapers whenever I feel burnt out or tired.
I personally use Procreate, but you can probably find free alternatives on the App Store.
Creator Wallpapers
A LOT of creators use wallpapers to get that 💰.
I consider myself a creator, and buying wallpapers is a great way of supporting someone at a small cost.
Here are some wallpaper packs from iPad creators you might've heard of before:
1. Canoopsy: https://canoopsy.media/collections/wallpapers
2. This is E: https://www.thisise.tech/store/p/ginger-spruce-8k-wallpaper-pack
3. Christopher Lawley: https://chrislawley.gumroad.com/l/WallpaperPack1
You can also check out my first wallpapers here: https://overoptimize.gumroad.com/l/iplanet. They're free to download, though you can pay if you want to help out.
Final Thoughts
"Having an environment that is supportive is really important for success"—Tory Burch
Thanks for reading!
Adi