Your computer wall paper can say a lot about you as a person, and even just what you use your computer for! And unsurprisingly, because of this there are many different kinds of wall papers, and the kinds just continue to grown and grow. Its’ because it is in some way a creative outlet for people to customize part of the computer experience. And, since people use them so frequently now, it’s something they interact with and see often.

It’s interesting that the first desktop wall paper was in the Windows X system. It allowed for arbitrary images to be allocated as the background screen. Of course, it could only be a solid color or a binary image at the time, and we have definitely come a long way since it was first implemented in 1985. Two years after that, the Mac OS allowed for images as well, but at a much more limited degree. It wasn’t until 1990 that Windows allowed for the full customization of your background imagery, and coined the name “wallpaper” for this.

From then on, you could set full images as your background, with options to tile the image, stretch it to fit your screen, or center it in the middle of your background color. And now with things like dynamic and live backgrounds, there are even more ways to customize your computing experience!

A dynamic background is for your PC or Mac, and basically means that your desktop wall paper can cycle through multiple images on a timed basis, sort of like a slide show. This allows for a more dynamic background image, hence the name. Live desktop wall paper is specifically for your mobile device, such as an tablet PC, Android or iPhone, and basically means that you have a dynamic image that you can interact with via your touch screen just like the rest of your applications!