
Making your Android device your own is one of the best parts about being on Android. Since it is so customizable, you can pretty much get it to look like whatever you want once you put in the time and effort. However, some of the most important changes are built into the OS to start with, such as the option to change wallpapers, assign custom ringtones to contacts and changing your notification sounds. Today, we’ll let you about an app called Zedge, which allows you to browse and pick custom wallpapers and sounds from a wide selection and with minimal effort to set them in place. Interested? Well, read ahead to find out all about it!
Zedge is a free app and community that gathers all sorts of content that you can use to customize your devices with. The app recommends items to you and allows you to automatically set them as your default sounds or wallpapers, making device customization a breeze and super easy to accomplish. To get started, just download the Zedge app using this Play Store link. Once you download and install the app, just open it up and you should see the following screen once it loads:
This side drawer allows you to choose a category and lets you quickly access Settings, Favorites and Downloads. Lets select a category and take a look! Picking the “Wallpapers” options lets you browse the current selection of wallpapers, and as you can see, you can swipe left and right to access extra options, including category sorting and navigation, most recent entries, most popular wallpapers and so on. It’s all ordered in an easy to understand manner, and the category navigation makes finding something you want a pretty cool experience. Since you can see the wallpaper thumbnail right away, it’s easy to see if you’re interested in the item, so once you find a wallpaper you want to get, just tap over it. Once you do, you’ll see this screen:
Here, you can swipe to access extra information, including the category, date added and author. You can also rate it at the bottom by tapping over the stars, and share it using the share icon next to it. If you’re interested in keeping this wallpaper, tap the “Download” button, and once it finishes, the button will be replaced with a “Set” button. Just tap it once it appears, and it should automatically replace your current wallpaper with the new one, just like that!
As you can see, wallpapers aren’t the only thing you can find on Zedge. You can also browse Live Wallpapers and see all sorts of screenshots and find new content pretty easily. It’s harder to navigate since Live Wallpapers require interaction and video to properly realize what you”re getting, but it has a nice collection and is generally much easier to use than the Play Store’s Live Wallpaper selection. Installing Live Wallpapers is also different, since it doesn’t directly download them and simply refers you to the direct Play Store link instead so you can progress from there, but it works fine.
On the other hand, navigating through Ringtones and Notification sounds is almost the same as the Wallpaper section, with the handy addition of a preview button that lets you directly sample the sound from the gallery:
Once you find a ringtone or notification sound you like, just tap over it and, like before, select the Download button and press the Set button to make it your current ringtone. It’s super easy to get working, and you don’t have to fiddle with any menus or locally browse files to set them as ringtones, making it a pretty good option for this sort of thing. You can also tap the “Settings” option in the category drawer to see some useful settings, like a enabled by default Family Filter to keep some of the more questionable content at bay, and an option to make Zedge automatically update and rotate your wallpaper based on your downloads using the app:
And that’s about it for Zedge. Pretty easy to use, no? I really like that it has a great selection of content and that everything is tagged and divided into nice categories to make the content you want to find always accessible, and the fact it’s so easy to set up means that anyone can use it without issues and with very little effort, which makes Zedge my personal recommendation to manage and browse your wallpapers, ringtones and notification sounds. Any questions or issues? Feel free to let us know in the comment section below!
Carlos S.
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I used Zedge for my background on all my app pages but how can I change it on my message app background?
Hello Linda,
It depends on what messaging app you use, as some of them do not offer the option to change the background.