Introducing SwirlWalls — A next-gen, fun-filled, customizable animated wallpaper experience
Between glancing at the lock screen, loading apps from the home screen or using gesture navigation, many of us are looking at our wallpaper hundreds of times a day.
Most of us set our wallpaper to an image or photo, and in relatively short order this wallpaper becomes its namesake: a largely static decoration we barely notice.
18 months ago, we challenged ourselves to look at the wallpaper category from first principles to see if we could create something better. The day has come to reveal our first answer to this challenge.
Introducing SwirlWalls
SwirlWalls is a living, customizable, color filled wallpaper app built for today’s modern phones. SwirlWalls turns the act of looking at our wallpaper, something we all do hundreds of times a day, into an interactive, joyous micro session of delight.
Truly responsive
Ask yourself: would you rather run your finger over a poster or a turntable?
Remember the “ah-ha” moment when you first saw Steve Jobs scroll an iPhone via touch? Our first principles thinking led us to ask whether we could find a similar level of responsiveness as we interact with our wallpaper.
SwirlWalls’ “ah-ha” moment came when centered a swirl themed wallpaper at the middle of the screen and made this wallpaper spin to match our touch input.
Consider the common case of swiping between launcher home screens. Typically, the most responsiveness you’ll experience here is your wallpaper shifting to the side a little. With SwirlWalls, your background reacts with pixel perfect accuracy to your finger movements. A slow finger drag sees your wallpaper spin perfectly to match your finger movements, while a fast left-to-right flick sees your wallpaper quickly spin counter-clockwise, before decelerating over time.
This is the real magic of SwirlWalls: making the hundreds of wallpaper taps and swipes you’re already doing daily feel that much more responsive. Best of all, this responsiveness is purely additive with no downside.
Take it from us: having your wallpaper spin as a new app opens or as your device screens fades from on to ambient mode sounds like nothing, but it’s fun — and fun for nothing!
Gorgeous, purpose built art — with remixes!
SwirlWalls is launching with over 140 gorgeous, custom designed swirl-themed wallpapers. Each wallpaper looks, and just as importantly, animates with eye-popping delight.
But SwirlWalls treats wallpapers differently to typical wallpaper apps — certainly we are not trying to win people over by sheer wallpaper count.
Instead, SwirlWalls groups its wallpapers into two buckets: base styles, and remixes. The form a remix takes depends on its style. Some remixes are different color combinations of the main style, others are different effects.
But the one constant of all SwirlWalls wallpapers is they are gorgeous, uniquely stylized image that look amazing when spinning.
Built for Dark theme
Every wallpaper style has multiple remixes designed for dark theme. SwirlWalls reacts to system Dark theme preference, and will automatically switch to and from a dark remix as Dark theme toggles on and off.
FlickFX — fleeting, frivolous fun
FlickFX: the wallpaper equivalent of the frivolous, fleeting joy one experiences wrist flicking the AirPods case closed.
I spent a decade developing video games, so making fun, interactive software is in my DNA. SwirlWalls aims to bring this sensibility of fun to your wallpaper via a new feature called FlickFX. When you make a Wii remote style flick gesture with your device, the wallpaper responds in kind.
FlickFX is a feature that risks sounding silly on paper, but I’m confident after a few flicks, you’ll come to love it.
Customizable
A full suite of settings is available, allowing you to configure the app to your tastes. Tweak the wallpaper dim, tint the status/navigation bars, adjust rotation speeds and more. We’re quite fond of the gesture settings, particularly the ability to configure a gesture to lock the device screen.
Modern app, classic business model
In 2021, most apps follow a somewhat similar business model: freemium, with a mix of ads, in-app purchases and subscriptions. We’re not knocking this business model — in fact, we’ll likely try a version of this ourselves with future ActionWalls apps.
But for SwirlWalls, we’ve kept things extremely simple: a one time, fairly priced, paid app. No ads, no in-app purchases, no subscriptions. Pay once for the app, unlock everything and use it forever. End of story.
It’s our hope that in times of economic uncertainty, this straightforward proposition will prove attractive for many people.
Over to you!
We’re elated to finally debut SwirlWalls. We feel its combination of innovation and fun, delivered via gorgeous artwork and for a single up front price, makes for a truly compelling offering. Give it a try and let us know your thoughts!
