Starting with Android 2.1. (API Level 7), developers can create live wallpapers - richer, animated, interactive backgrounds - on their home screens. A live wallpaper is very similar to a normal Android application: you can create menu with settings, use SGL and OpenGL for drawing, accelerometer, etc.

In this article, I want to demonstrate how to create live wallpaper from scratch. Step-by-step, we will create live wallpaper that would output TV test pattern on out home screen. Just like on real TV during night hours!

This article will highlight the following aspects of Live Wallpaper development:

  1. Drawing on graphic primitives (circles, rectangles) using android.graphics.Canvas class
  2. Developing of applications for screens with different resolution and orientation
  3. Creation of settings dialog for live wallpaper
  4. Reading of variables values for resource XML file
  5. Actual creation of live wallpaper for Android