To‑Do List Wallpaper: Turn Your Tasks Into Your iPhone Background

A to‑do list wallpaper is exactly what it sounds like: your task list, rendered as an image, set as your Lock Screen. It’s the one place on your phone you can’t ignore. Here’s how to make one — and how to make one that updates itself.

Why a wallpaper beats every other task display

Widgets truncate, notifications get swiped, Live Activities expire. A wallpaper is different: it’s the canvas everything else sits on. It appears the instant you raise your phone, before Face ID, before any app. If your tasks are in the wallpaper, forgetting them requires actively not looking at your phone — and nobody manages that.

The manual way (free, but high‑friction)

You can build a task wallpaper by hand:

Write your list in Notes, Freeform, or any image editor over a background you like.
Take a screenshot or export the image.
Set it as your Lock Screen: Settings → Wallpaper → Add New Wallpaper → Photos.

Some people wire this up with a personal Apple Shortcut — take text, convert it to an image, then use the Set Wallpaper action. That works too, and our Shortcuts automation guide shows the full recipe.

The problem: your list changes constantly. Finish a task, add a task — now your wallpaper is wrong until you repeat the whole export‑and‑set dance. Most people do this for three days and quit. A task wallpaper is only useful if it always reflects reality.

The automatic way: a wallpaper that follows your list

📱 This is exactly what Daylist does

Daylist is a simple to‑do app with a renderer built in. It draws your current tasks onto a clean card over a calm navy‑to‑sand gradient — designed to be legible next to the Lock Screen clock — and hands the finished image to Apple Shortcuts, which sets it as your wallpaper. A personal automation that fires when you close the app means this happens in the background every time your list changes.

What ends up on your Lock Screen:

A “TODAY” header with a live count — “3 tasks remaining”.
Up to 8 tasks with checkboxes; completed ones get a teal check and strikethrough.
A “+N more in Daylist” note if your list runs long.
An “All clear” state when you’ve finished everything — genuinely satisfying to unlock to.

Make it look good, not just functional

A task wallpaper lives on your screen all day, so design matters. Daylist’s wallpaper uses a frosted white card with soft shadows so tasks stay readable over the gradient, bold rounded type sized for at‑a‑glance reading, and enough margin that the iOS clock and Face ID indicator never collide with your list.

Set up your automatic to‑do list wallpaper

Download Daylist and add your tasks for today.
Follow the guided setup: one shared Shortcut, one automation, about two minutes.
Close the app. Look at your Lock Screen. That’s it — it stays in sync from now on.

Your tasks, beautifully on your Lock Screen

Get the to‑do list wallpaper that updates itself.

Download on theApp Store