We need a way to change to customize wallpapers. And why can you not already
I mean on Android 16 One UI 8.0 on Samsung Galaxy tab a9+
@tobF.A.O28 to put it in the simplest terms, it’s because Chromium hasn’t done it upstream. And it can’t really be slapped in with the same or similar code.
- On desktop, Chromium treats the New Tab Page like a webpage. “Sure, slap a picture on it” is easy and cheap.
- On Android, the New Tab Page is closer to part of the app itself, not just a webpage. Changing it means changing how the app behaves.
In the simplest terms though = Phones trade freedom for stability.
-Edit-
AI response, if you like it better:
The Rendering Engine Difference
On desktop, the New Tab Page (NTP) is essentially a local web page rendered by the browser’s engine. It can handle high-resolution image assets easily because it has access to significant system RAM and a dedicated GPU.
On Android, the NTP is implemented differently. It is often a hybrid of native Android UI components and web views. This allows the browser to launch and display the “Search” and “Most Visited” tiles almost instantly without waiting for a full web page to render. Adding a custom high-resolution background to this native/hybrid setup requires more complex memory management to ensure the browser doesn’t lag or crash on mid-range devices when you open a new tab.
The “Discover” Feed Priority
Chromium’s mobile strategy is heavily centered around the Discover Feed. On mobile, the NTP isn’t just a starting point for a URL; it’s a content delivery platform.
- Visual Clutter: A custom background often clashes with the cards, text, and images in the Discover feed.
- Data and Battery: Loading a high-quality custom image every time you open a tab (which users do dozens of times a day on mobile) consumes more battery and background data compared to a solid color or a simple system-themed background.
Screen Real Estate
The desktop NTP has a massive amount of “white space” around the search bar. On a vertical phone screen, that space is almost entirely consumed by:
- The Search/Omnibox.
- The 2x4 grid of Most Visited sites.
- The “Discover” or “Following” feeds. By the time these elements are rendered, there is very little “background” actually visible, making the effort to implement custom wallpapers less of a priority for the Chromium team.
Ohhh, my bad. I hate how this forum sometimes misleads me on what category I’m actually viewing unless I see the small tiny “Android” badge. That’s on me. (I view by new, not by category).
This I am aware of, but I have considered this. Brave supports it’s own background images, so I don’t see how or why it cannot be an option to import a picture from your phone, sanitize it like the desktop version does, put it in the /Android/data (or media) folder, and just pull from that instead?
This is one of those times where I honestly feel it’s not quite the full truth since it CAN display its own pictures, and Android even gives you folders to put such things (so Brave isn’t constantly reaching into /Photos or /DCIM.
Chromium also doesn’t have Shields, etc, but it was implemented. Again pointing to the previous that it can be added if a developer were to just, get creative without breaking things since it can show pictures at all, so it’s already parsing images. It just needs to parse a local image, that’s it.
@MasterLink edit I made just before you posting might answer other parts. It’s just too much of a lift, especially for custom images. On top of that more resource heavy and likely to cause issues. Combine that with limited screen real estate and there’s no real motivation to do it. They could, but there are higher priorities for attention. This is especially true for a smaller Brave dev team.
A person would likely have better luck trying to encourage the huge Chromium team to do it. I mean, it took years for Brave to add the option for people to be able to add custom sites to the favorites on NTP and even after 5+ years still have not managed to add the ability for people to add custom search engines despite iOS and Desktop being able to do this.
Just because something “can” be done doesn’t mean it’s realistic to do. That’s part of the issue here. If there’s anyone who is knowledgeable and wants to contribute toward the code, I’m sure Brave would gladly take the help. Otherwise it just is a low priority thing and likely would require it to be added upstream from Chromium.
As someone a bit more familiar with Android than you may not realize, this truly not entirely true and I’m going to hard disagree and step away from this. I’m not the typical user, I’ve made it clear countless times, and now I’m going to just call it out: The team working on the Android port needs better skills. There, I finally said what’s been on my mind.
Look at this one Chromium based browser on Android. That new tab page wallpaper is my front porch.
No heavy resources, no screen real-estate issue, and more importantly, it used Android’s own file picker to select it, applied it, and boom done instantly without so much as lag.
Except it is, and Edge does it fast, smooth with no issues. Again, I’m no longer willing to accept that the Android team knows entirely what they are doing, but would rather come up with excuses.
And to be clear, you should know me by now, for months I’ve been helping and defending this browser. But no, this is a skill issue on the Android team and refuse to accept the excuses no longer.
I want to be very clear here, I never wanted to just call it out like this, but I’m reaching that limit.
This is the only true statement I hear here. Edge never even got that far. But we’re discussing the most simplest thing a web browser should be able to do, load a silly picture. If Edge pulled it off, cleanly as they did, it’s truly down to skill.
I sincerely might at this point just to prove how wrong this truly is.
Think about this for a second. Comparing a company with maybe around 300 employees in all roles to one with well over 100,000 is fair. Or dev team of like 5-10 compared to one with over 100. Or the company making billions a year to one in the millions.
Might be worth it. I see many people complain and claim they have knowledge, but not a single one ever “puts up” and contributes or anything. It often just is false claims or noise. But Brave is indeed an open source project and they have it open for people to contribute. Things just often take a lot more than a person gives credit for.
And as I tried indicating, size of the team compared to things they are working on is critical. Their priorities often go to other aspects.
Agreed. Never said they didn’t. Btw, there is a Github on this as well, but been a year with no movement. They had an early design for it back then. I’m not sure what really has caused any delay on it.
But they have also had issues open for the other, where they saw background images as causing problems
And yeah, they do need a bigger and more active team. It’s crazy how many things are pending for years. Like even the one that talks about NTP images taking a few seconds to load was created in 2022 and then the reply in 2025 was confirming it’s still an issue.
I know any time I have brought things up to people, they always say they don’t have the resources needed so they set priorities.
Not quite sure what to say overall. Just point blank point out where things are.
In terms of Edge and Opera, they designed their own NTP rather than using Chromium’s. Brave is a closer clone of Chromium/Chrome on a lot of things. It would be nice if they could build out and maintain a lot more, but they pick and choose at the moment.
@Mattches wondering if you might ping to find out the status of being able to change NTP background for mobile devices?
Around this time last year it looked like was progress, but then fell silent again.
-side note-
There are other topics on this, not sure if all should be left open or duplicates closed up. Anyway…