Koi by Kittehface

Setting Your Favorite Old Live Wallpaper

When I bought my first cell phone, it was a simple Nextel flip phone. I can’t even think about how long ago that was. 1997, 98 maybe. A lot has changed since those “olden days”, as my son calls them. Mostly the changes have been really cool things and even us old folks can’t imagine life without a Smart Phone.

A few not so good things have happened to the technology too. No I’m not talking about the social and personal aspects. I’m talking about updates, upgrades, leaving some of our favorite apps in the dust, causing us to look for an acceptable replacement. And often being frustrated because we can’t find that exact match, especially for those of us who don’t like change.

The only constant in the Universe,
is that Things Change. Never give up.
~ Springwolf 🐾 © 1990

A few years ago the Android operating system software for cell phones and tablets went through a big upgrade. It was necessary, but it also had a few unintentional consequences. Some of those have been corrected, or work arounds have been provided in subsequent updates. One of those things affected by these upgrades were the Live Wallpaper apps. Android replaced the Live Wallpapers with Themes and many of the older Wallpapers stopped working or couldn’t be customized any longer.

I used to have a Live Wallpaper app for every season. I really liked the seasonal apps for Fall and Winter and I had several of those. I enjoyed the colorful falling leaves and falling snow over the village with the occasional sighting of Santa and his Reindeer passing over the town. But my most favorite Live Wallpaper has been swimming koi fish. I really enjoyed watching the different colorful Koi fish swim across the screen and being able to feed my little fishies!

• Snowfall Free Wallpaper – With Santa Claus & Holiday Lights
• Koi Fish Free Wallpaper – Pick your fish, background and floating plants
• Seasons Live Wallpaper Pro – You can set your background for Fall, Summer or Winter $0.99

After reading the comments on the Koi Live Wallpaper by Kittehface Software, I wasn’t the only person who missed this app. Thankfully, the upgrades to Android were improved and addressed a few issues, that were unintentional consequences of rolling out Android Live Themes.  But some of the comments with issues continued for a while. Not everyone is a technogeek who can figure out the work arounds. With a little patience, you can resolve those issues. But sometimes you just have to wait for the next update to come out. And then there maybe away for you to use the old apps you love so much.

If you have an older Live Wallpaper that you paid for and still want to use on your latest and greatest Android phone, you probably still can. Here’s what I figured out on my Samsung Galaxy S8 to run and configure my favorite wallpaper.

Setting Up Live Wallpapers
Here’s how you can set up your Android Device to use Live Wallpaper.
The following example is specific to the Koi Live Wallpaper. But this is how I set up my other Seasonal Live Wallpapers, so I’m assuming it works for all of them.
(You can click on any of the following images and see a larger version.)

1. Start by visiting GooglePlay, and downloading your favorite Live Wallpaper. If you can’t find it for your new cell, than the developer may have dropped support of the app. But if you can still find it, you maybe able to get it to work.
2. On your Home screen, press an empty spot and hold it for a second or two, until you see the customization menu.
   
3. At the bottom, select the Wallpapers or Themes icon.
   They both go to the same place. You might receive a prompt window that says:
   “Load Store Content is set to Never”. The screen will have two button options.
   1. A red button that says: Let store content load
   2. A grayed out button that says: Check out my stuffI prefer to keep my phone separate from such places. So I would select the 2nd option and just go to my stuff.
4. The next window should be “My Stuff” with menu items for Themes Wallpaper etc.
   
5. From this screen select the Wallpaper Tab.
   Here you’ll see your available wallpapers that come with your phone. You can also choose a picture from your Gallery pictures.

   These are the Wallpapers available for your phone and lock screen. What you won’t see here, are you Live Wallpapers. For that, you’ll need to tap on the 3-dot Configuration icon on the top left of the screen.

   Once you tap the 3-dots, you’ll see a popup menu item for “Live wallpapers”. Tap that.

6. Next you should see a panel listing your currently available Live Wallpapers.
   You won’t be able to configure the wallpaper here. That come later.

   Select the Live Wallpaper you want to use for your phone.

   When you tap the wallpaper, a popup window will appear at the bottom of your screen. You can set the wallpaper for all your Home screen and all the panels you have configured on your phone. Or you can select the paper for those screens, Plus the initial Lock screen (if you use one. which you should.)

   Congratulations, your wallpaper should be set.

Live Wallpaper Configuration
Now that you have your Wallpaper set, you may have some configuration within the Wallpaper app that you want to set. For the Koi pond for instance, I can set a background, how many fish I want to see and what colors I want those fish to be. Along with a few other options. I wish I could say you just tap on the app and go configure the wallpaper. But you can’t do that. You can start up the app, but there are no navigation buttons once your in there. At least not that I’ve been able to find. But after an hour of playing around with Options, Configurations etc. I finally found a method that worked.

1. Start by pulling down on the top of any panel on your phone, until you see the Notification window. Press the little Cog-wheel to see the cell phones Setting options.
   
2. Select the Display option.
   Yes there’s a Wallpapers and themes option, but that will take you to the screens you’ve just been through in the above steps. So ignore that.
   
3. On the Display panel scroll down until you see Screen Saver
   

   If you don’t use a screen saver, this button should be off. To configure your Live Wallpaper, you’ll have to turn it ON as i the picture below. Don’t worry, you’re not going to leave it on. Once it’s turned on, you should see the name of your Live Wallpaper App. In this case that’s the Koi app. Press the name of the app to see your Screen savers.

   The Screen saver panel will list your current options. Next to the Koi app, you’ll see another Cog-Wheel. Press that to configure your Live Wallpaper.

4. Once you press the Cog wheel, the app’s usual Configuration options should appear. Select your options and save them. In some cases, you just need to press the Return button on you phone to save and exit. Go back to the Display panel and scroll down until you see the Screen saver option again. It should still be turned on, like the picture above. If you want the screen saver to run all the time, just leave that on. If you want your phone to automatically lock, go dark and save battery, make sure you turn this option back off!
   

That’s it. Your Live Wallpaper should be Live and well and working!
Have Fun!

If you’d like more information about setting up the Koi Live Wallpaper, or any Live Wallpaper, see Configure Your Vintage Live Wallpaper.

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© 1997-2021 Springwolf, D.D., Ph.D., Springwolf’s Creations. All Rights Reserved.