iOS 16 Limitations: 200 Lock Screens on iPhone, 50 Wallpapers per Lock Screen

iOS 16 won’t let you create more than 200 custom lock screens on your iPhone, but who in their right mind would want to cycle through that many lock screens anyway?

• What is happening? Someone has taken it upon themselves to create as many customizable lock screens on their iPhone as the system allows. They have reached the limit of 200 lock screens per device, though that’s not the only ceiling in terms of lock screen.
• Why care? Now you know that iOS 16 places a limit on the number of custom lock screens your iPhone can have.
• What to do? Are you worried about this? Not. Remember that there are more important things in life than manipulating between 200 custom lock screens.

How many custom iOS 16 lock screens can you create?

iOS 16 introduces the ability to personalize the lock screen with custom fonts, colors, widgets, and more. Touching and holding the lock screen will open the built-in editor, where you can create multiple lock screens, each with a different design, and switch between them with a swipe. Read: How to use widgets on the lock screen

Someone on Reddit determined that iOS 16 won’t let you create more than 200 custom lock screens for every iPhone. If you try to create another lock screen after reaching this limit, you’ll see a “Wallpaper limit reached”message telling you that you must remove at least one custom lock screen before creating a new one.

No more than 50 wallpapers per lock screen

And as it turns out, there is also a 50 wallpaper limit for each lock screen (when using the image set cycling option).

None of this should be a problem if your lock screen strategy comes down to setting the lock screen you like and forgetting about everyone else. But these limitations exist, and Apple doesn’t seem to have thought them through very well.

Let’s say you’ve created around 200 custom lock screens.

Does Apple really expect you to swipe through 137 lock screens to get to the one you like? The search function will solve this problem. Or how about viewing all lock screens from top to bottom, like in Safari to view open tabs? There must be a better way to shuffle our lock screens! Where is my reorder function?

I can remove individual lock screens (swipe up then tap the trash can icon), but where’s the Remove All option to quickly remove all lock screens in one fell swoop and start over? How about selecting multiple lock screens to remove at the same time? Read: How to set up the Battery Widget on the iPhone lock screen.

Other lock screen restrictions

Other restrictions apply to the updated iOS 16 lock screen, such as the inability to place widgets anywhere. And one more thing that especially annoys me: adding a widget under the clock disables the depth effect for the wallpaper).

iOS 16.1, which is just around the corner, will attempt to address some of these annoyances by adding improved wallpaper management in Settings → Wallpaper.

From there, you’ll be able to see your lock and home screen wallpapers, as well as swipe through your existing custom lock screens.