Itinerary

Free Wallpaper

Android · 2016 · The first thing I shipped

You look at your home screen more often than almost any other image in your life. Free Wallpaper is a small, fast library of high-definition backgrounds across six categories, all free — and the first app I ever put on the Play Store.

A rippled sand dune wallpaper on an Android home screen
A yellow heart on a textured orange ground, as a wallpaper on an Android home screen
A hand raising a paper bag with a plant growing out of it, as a wallpaper on an Android home screen
A hand-drawn lightbulb and the word idea, as a wallpaper on an Android home screen
A wallpaper from the app on an Android home screen
A wallpaper from the app on an Android home screen
An open window onto a moonlit sky, as a wallpaper on an Android home screen

What it does

  1. Six categories

    Animals, Buildings, Love, Motivation, Nature and Abstract — enough range to find something without endless scrolling.

  2. High definition, no cost

    Every wallpaper is full resolution and free. No unlock, no watermark, no premium tier hiding the good ones.

  3. Loads fast

    Waiting for an image to appear is the quickest way to lose someone. Getting wallpapers on screen quickly was most of the actual work.

  4. Nothing in the way

    A deliberately plain browsing UI. The wallpaper is the content, so the app should disappear behind it.

This is the first thing I ever shipped. It is not sophisticated — a categorised list and a fast image loader. But it went out into the world and found people, which taught me earlier than anything else that shipping beats polishing.

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