With iOS 16, Apple overhauled the Lock Screen design to make it far more customizable, allowing you to personalize everything from the color and style of the clock font to the look of pictures used as wallpaper. iOS 16 also introduces Lock Screen widgets that provide you with glanceable app information without having to access the Home Screen.

astronomy widgets lock screen
To consolidate all of these changes, iOS 16 also brings a Lock Screen wallpaper gallery, allowing you to build a gallery of different Lock Screen wallpapers and switch between them on the fly with a swipe.

If you have an Apple Watch, the Lock Screen gallery interface will be familiar to you, since it's very similar to the way watch face customization works. Even the process of deleting wallpapers from the gallery is similar. Here's how it's done.

  1. Unlock your ‌‌iPhone‌‌ with Face ID or Touch ID.
  2. Press and hold on the Lock Screen to enter the wallpaper gallery.
  3. Swipe to the wallpaper you want to delete.
  4. Swipe upwards on the selected wallpaper.
  5. Tap the red trash icon that appears.
  6. Tap Delete at the prompt to confirm.
    Lock Screen

That's all there is to it. Now you can create as many Lock Screens as you like, safe in the knowledge that if you have too many or don't like what you've got, you can always use the delete function.

Popular Stories

Apple Announces Special Event in New York Feature 1

Apple Reportedly Plans to Unveil at Least Five New Products Next Week

Sunday February 22, 2026 9:48 am PST by
In his Power On newsletter today, Bloomberg's Mark Gurman said Apple will have a three-day stretch of product announcements from Monday, March 2 through Wednesday, March 4. In total, he expects Apple to introduce "at least five products." Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. A week ago, Apple invited selected journalists and content creators to an "Apple Experience" in...
iOS 26

iOS 26.3.1 Update for iPhones Coming Soon as 'Apple Experience' Nears

Sunday February 22, 2026 5:29 pm PST by
Apple's software engineers are testing iOS 26.3.1, according to the MacRumors visitor logs, which have been a reliable indicator of upcoming iOS versions. iOS 26.3.1 should be a minor update that fixes bugs and/or security vulnerabilities, and it will likely be released within the next two weeks. Last month, Apple released iOS 26.2.1 with bug fixes and support for the second-generation...
tim cook data privacy day

Tim Cook Warned by CIA That China Could Move on Taiwan by 2027

Tuesday February 24, 2026 4:03 am PST by
Apple CEO Tim Cook was among a handful of top tech executives who attended a classified CIA briefing warning that China could attack Taiwan by 2027, according to a sweeping investigative report by The New York Times ($). The previously unreported briefing was apparently held in a secure room in Silicon Valley in July 2023. The meeting is said to have been arranged at the request of the...