How to Get iOS 16 Weather Lock Screen Live Wallpaper on Your iPhone in iOS 15

Apple is making big changes to your iPhone’s lock screen in iOS 16, and one of those changes lets you choose a constantly updated wallpaper for your local weather conditions. If you don’t want to wait until fall for a stable iOS 16 release and don’t want to install any iOS 16 betas, you can still get the constantly updated weather wallpapers for your iOS 15 lock screen.

While iOS 16 lock screen weather wallpapers are built into Apple’s new lock screen gallery, you’ll have to turn to the Apple Shortcuts app in iOS 15 and use Broank’s theme engine. Before creating these wallpaper-themed shortcuts, Broank designed home screen icon settings such as Depths and Mordern14 for jailbroken devices, as well as keyboard themes.

Broank theme engines are easy to use and highly customizable. As with the weather widgets on the iOS 16 lock screen, you can customize your lock screen to display the current temperature, wind speed, rain forecast, and more. Unlike the iOS 16 version, the backgrounds won’t actually display the current weather conditions with animation, but you can set them to weather-related images or any other images you want.

Step 1: Decide what label you want

The two lock screen weather shortcuts created by Broank — Glance and Wetr — are similar but have some differences, such as how you customize the shortcut theme and what you can do with it.

Glance has a hub called Glance Hub that allows you to change the theme and other settings options. In addition, compared to Wetr, there are many more options for customization. With Glance, you can change the theme, city, background, wallpaper, weather unit, and even your name, as well as the bottom two extensions.

With Wetr, you can change the look, effects, temperature, theme, clock format, related home screen wallpaper, home screen wallpaper blur, home screen weather, and more.

A look at the lock screen (left) and Wetr (right).

Note. “Complications”is a term used in watchOS to describe on-screen elements that provide quick and easy information that you can tap to navigate to more detailed information in the respective app. Broank uses it for two circles of information added to the wallpaper between the flashlight and camera buttons on Face ID models or below the time on Touch ID models. You cannot touch them, but you can change the information displayed.

Step 2: Make sure the shortcuts have access to iCloud

Both shortcuts upload theme data to the Shortcuts folder on your iCloud Drive. This way, your iPhone doesn’t have to constantly ping the server to update weather conditions, saving you data and battery life. To make sure your Shortcuts app can share data with iCloud, go to Settings -> [your name] -> iCloud, then turn on the Shortcuts toggle if it’s not already enabled.

Step 3: Set the web app to your home screen (view only)

For the Glance shortcut, you need to add a web app or bookmark to your home screen. To do this, go to seek.broank.com in Safari, click the Share button, select Add to Home Screen from the action list, and click Add to confirm.

Step 4: Install the shortcut

Now you need to install the shortcut, which is the easy part.

• Glance: Open Glance Hub from the home screen. On the tab with the magnifying glass icon, click the Beta button at the top, then click Add Shortcut when the preview appears.
• Wetr: Open broank.com/Wetr.html in a browser, scroll down and click the Download Wetr button, then click Add Shortcut when the preview appears.

Step 5: Run the shortcut to set it up

To start the initial app setup, open the Shortcuts app if it’s not already open, then tap the shortcut tile in the list of installed shortcuts. He will ask you several times to allow him to perform certain tasks.

Some permission requests you may see include talking to GitHub (to determine weather conditions), visiting Unsplash (to get wallpapers), accessing your location (to determining your weather region), saving to files (to saving weather conditions).), setting wallpaper and visiting the developer’s site.

For the shortcut to work optimally, I suggest clicking “Always allow”if it gives you the option. Otherwise, you will have to keep providing quick access to things on future launches.

Troubleshooting

If you’re getting a Glance error regarding missing files and that won’t let you fully launch the shortcut without those files, you’ll have to upload the files to iCloud manually. Glance says the files need to be installed manually on iOS 15.3.1 and below, but I had iOS 15.6 and still had to do the extra work.

To install them, open the settings tab (gear icon) in Glance Hub, click “Download Glance.zip”and again “Download Glance.zip”. When the ZIP preview appears, click the Share button and select Save to Files. I would install it outside the Shortcuts folder on iCloud Drive, unzip it, then drag the folder into the Shortcuts folder to “Replace”the existing one. You can then delete the ZIP file.

Step 6Check Your Lock Screen

After launching the shortcut without further permission requests, it’s time to move on to the lock screen and see what it looks like. You should have a new wallpaper with weather information at the bottom for your region. If you want to customize what you see, skip to step 7.

Step 7Customize the look of your lock screen

You can edit the shortcut settings to customize how items appear on the lock screen. As I said in step 1, labels have different ways of editing elements, and I’ll cover both.

Glance hub settings

If you use the Glance shortcut theme, you have access to an application full of settings to change. Open Glance Hub from the home screen and the last three tabs are for different settings.

The theme tab (brush icon) allows you to change the theme to any available pre-made theme. Gray themes either do not support your device or are simply not available at the moment.

The Masks tab (phone icon) allows you to add a black or dark status bar, a deck of cards effect, or no masking. He shows examples of each.

The settings tab (gear icon) allows you to change the information displayed on the wallpaper, as well as the wallpaper itself if you want more control over your choice of theme. Everything you see below is fair game. After changing any settings, you may have to click “Update”at the top of the settings page to install them.

User:

• Name: Change the name it uses for greetings.

City:

• Fake: Change the city to something that is not your current location.
• Temperature: Add or remove a temperature next to the city name.

Complications:

• Status: Hide or remove extensions next to the flashlight or camera buttons (on models with Face ID) or under the time (on models with Touch ID).
• Complication on the left: change to rain, wind, air quality index, battery, moon phase, next alarm, next calendar event, reminder, current temperature, update time, UV index, sun, high temperature and low temperature.
• Right complication: Same as left complication above.
• Rings: Add or remove ring borders around complications.
• Battery Warning: Select a battery percentage that causes a color change around the battery complication annular border to indicate low battery.
• UV Index Warning: Select a UV index number that causes a color change around the annular border of battery complication to indicate high exposure to UV radiation.

Notices:

• Summary. Enable or disable the notification that displays information provided by Glance.
• Sound effects: Turn on or off the sound that plays when Glance is updated. If enabled, you can also change the tonal sound.

Wallpaper:

• Source: Specify where Glance gets the wallpaper from. You can choose between random images in Unsplash, random images in the Photos app, images in dark and light modes, specific search terms in Unsplash, images of current weather conditions, or a static image.
• Home screen: Turn on or off the automatic change of the home screen wallpaper to match the lock screen wallpaper.
• WeatherFX: Add or remove a background that reflects the current weather conditions.

Units:

• Precipitation: Select inches (inches) or millimeters (mm) for rain, snow, etc.
• Wind: Choose between miles per hour (mph) or kilometers per hour (km/h) for wind speed.
• Hour Format: Select 12-hour or 24-hour time format.

Wetr shortcut settings

Wetr doesn’t have many things to change, but it’s a bit easier to set up and you don’t have to add or install an extra app or bookmark.

In the list of shortcuts in the Shortcuts app, tap the ellipsis (•••) icon on the Wetr tile. Here you can change the appearance, effects, temperature, theme, clock format, related home screen wallpaper, home screen wallpaper blur, and home screen weather.

• Appearance: Automatically changes the theme of your iPhone to dark or light depending on the time of day. (on or off)
• Clear Effects: Shows the effects of the sun and stars on a clear day. (on or off)
• HS Wall: Matches the home screen wallpaper with the lock screen wallpaper. (on or off)
• HS Blur: Blurs the home screen wallpaper after matching it with the lock screen wallpaper. (on or off)
• HS Weather: Adds weather overlays to your home screen wallpaper. (on or off)
• Temperature: Shows the temperature as actual temperature or how it feels. (Real or feels)
• Theme: Change the theme of the lock screen. (Auto, Clean, Classic, Dark, Light, Minimal)
• Update Statistics: Shows when the lock screen wallpaper was last updated. (on or off)
• Hour Format: Shows 12-hour or 24-hour format in update statistics. (12 or 24)
• Wallpaper: Change the wallpaper source. (Auto, Custom, Weather, or a keyword such as Nature or City)
• Font: Select one of the 13 available fonts by moving it to the top of the list.

Step 8Create an Automation to Automatically Change Wallpaper

Shortcuts cannot be launched or updated unless you manually launch them or set them to launch when a trigger fires them automatically. If you’re using Apple’s automation feature to trigger a shortcut, you’ll have to set the automation every time you want the shortcut to update if you’re using the Time of Day trigger.

Below I will use the Time of Day trigger, but you can choose any trigger from the list. You can set the wallpaper to change every time you open a certain app, charge your iPhone, receive a text message or email from a certain contact, leave a place, etc. Using a time trigger means more work as you need to set automation. for every time. However, this is the closest thing to an automatic update without any further interaction from you.

I like to run the shortcut every hour during the day, but you may need something completely different. Setting up the automation is fairly easy, but can be a chore depending on how many times you want it to be updated throughout the day. However, it’s worth it in the end.

Follow the quick steps below to set up automation for a specific time of day when the shortcut changes weather wallpaper. Remember that you must repeat these steps every time you want.

1. Go to the “Automation”tab in the shortcuts.
2. Click “Create Personal Automation”to start a new automation. If you already have automations, tap the plus sign (+) first.
3. Select the Time of Day trigger.
4. Use the time picker to choose when you want the weather wallpaper to update, then click next.
5. Click “Add Action”or tap the search bar.
6. Find and select the Run Shortcut action.
7. Click “Shortcut”in action and select Glance or Wetr.
8. Click next.
9. Turn off the “Ask before launch”toggle and confirm by clicking “Don’t ask.”
10. Click Finish to complete and save the automation.
11. Repeat steps for any additional times you want.

How to stop using the weather theme

To stop using Glance or Wetr, you can save it in case you want to use it again, uninstall automation tools, or get rid of the setting entirely.

• If you think you might want to use Glance or Wetr again, open each automation in the Shortcuts app and turn off the “Enable this automation”toggle. Then turn it on when you want to use it again. View-only: You can hide a bookmark by hiding the entire home screen page it’s on, and bring it back by showing the page.
• If you just want to turn off automations, swipe left on each of them in the Shortcuts app.
• If you want to remove a shortcut, go to the list of shortcuts, press and hold the Glance or Wetr tile, select Remove, and then Remove Shortcut.
• Glance only: If you want to delete files from your iCloud Drive and delete the bookmark, open Glance Hub, click Delete Glance at the bottom of the settings tab, click Yes, Delete, or Delete. Always”every time it asks, then click “Done”. To delete a bookmark, press and hold on the home screen and select Delete Bookmark.
• To switch back to the weatherproof wallpaper, select the default wallpaper or custom wallpaper in the Wallpaper settings in the Settings app. You can also select “Use as wallpaper”from the share sheet of any image in the Photos app.

Getting rid of the shortcut (left) and deleting Glance files (right).