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How to manage your Chromebook wallpaper

April 19, 2019 by John R. Sowash

Why You Should Manage the Wallpaper on Student Chromebooks

The Google Admin console is filled with lots of features to help school districts manage their Chromebooks.

Some of these features are very technical while others are classroom focused.

Every once in a while, you’ll discover something that makes you stop and think…wait…what? Why is that there?

The ability to manage the wallpaper on district-owned Chromebooks is one of the surprising features hidden inside of the Chrome management settings.

Custom Wallpapers

At first glance, you might think “I’ve got enough to worry about with apps and extensions and web filtering…the last thing I need to do is manage student wallpaper!”

But take another look, because wallpaper isn’t just for aesthetics or to prevent students from using inappropriate images as their device background – you can it for communication.

Think of the desktop image on your Chromebook fleet like little billboards strategically placed throughout your classrooms, media centers, and offices. What do you want to say?

Chromebook Wallpaper Inspiration

Here are a few examples of how school districts are using desktop wallpaper to communicate with students.

Forest Park Middle School in Franklin, Wisconsin pushed out desktop wallpaper at the end of the school year to remind students of the Chromebook return procedure.

Chromebook Wallpaper Example

Wheatley Park School in Oxford, England builds school community by pushing out weekly wallpaper updates featuring the Word of the Week and one of the school’s community values.

Chromebook Wallpaper Example 2

Batesburg-Leesville school district in South Carolina uses the desktop space to provide staff and students with Chromebook tech tips.

? Check out some of the other neat things Batesburg-Leesville schools are doing to build school culture in this episode of the Chromebook Classroom podcast!

Chromebook Wallpaper Example 3

Commerce Independent School District in Texas features student artwork as desktop wallpaper with a winning design for elementary, middle, and high school.

Wallpaper Design Competition

Designing Custom Chromebook Wallpaper

You will want to verify the resolution of your devices to determine the correct size for your image file. If you have multiple Chromebook models you may need to develop multiple version to ensure that it renders correctly.

To determine the resolution of your Chromebook, click on the “snowman” (three dots in the top right corner of the browser) and select settings.

From the settings page search for “displays.” Inside of the displays section, you will see an option for “internal display” which will list the current resolution of your device.  

Wallpaper Display Size

There are lots of tools you can use to design your image file. Here are a couple of good options:

Canva App

Google Slides – change the page size to match the size of your Chromebooks. You can create additional slides each time you want to change the wallpaper and can share the file with others to collaborate on creating new wallpaper designs.

Canva – use the desktop wallpaper project type which features dozen of professionally designed templates. If you want a design that stands out, use Canva!

Regardless of the tool you use, you will want to export your finished design as a .jpg file of 16 MB or less.

Pushing out your Wallpaper

You can deploy your wallpaper in two ways:

Device Configuration – Deploys wallpaper to a specific group of devices, regardless of the user. Wallpaper will be visible on the lock screen. Use this method for district branding and generic communication.

To push out wallpaper by device, log in to the admin console and visit Device Management > Chrome > Device Settings > Sign in Settings

For more information on this setting, you can read Google’s help article here.

User Configuration – Use this method if you want to deploy different wallpapers based on user role (elementary student, high school student, teacher, etc).

Wallpaper can be deployed to any organizational unit within your G Suite domain. This is the best option for building-specific messaging.

To push out wallpaper by user, log in to the admin console and visit Device Management > Chrome > User Settings > General

Google’s help article on user wallpaper is available here.

Can users change managed wallpaper?

Users will be unable to remove or replace district-managed wallpaper as long as the image file is still present in the admin console.

If you only want to take over the desktop image temporarily, there is a work-around you can use to give users the ability to replace the image you have pushed out.

  1. Push out wallpaper using one of the above methods.
  2. After a period of time, delete the image file from the admin console.
  3. The district wallpaper will still be present, but users can change it as they like.

How would you use this feature in your district? Leave a comment to share your creative ideas!

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Rosie Briones says

    January 19, 2020 at 7:10 pm

    What great ideas! I will definitely be using the end of year message and I really like the art work contest.

    Reply
    • admin says

      January 20, 2020 at 4:13 am

      It’s a great way to showcase great student work. Providing students with an authentic audience will motivate them to do their best.

      Reply
  2. Rosie Briones says

    January 19, 2020 at 7:19 pm

    I really like these ideas! I am definitely going to use the end of year check in idea and I really like the art work contest idea.

    Reply
    • admin says

      January 20, 2020 at 4:12 am

      Thanks for the kind words, Rosie!

      Reply
  3. Aaron says

    February 14, 2020 at 6:55 pm

    I gave each student an exact week with a theme(Presidents Day, Maythe4th be with you, national donut day) and allowed each to make a background for the entire school.

    Reply
  4. Alexus says

    October 6, 2020 at 9:55 pm

    how do you change you background on the school chromebook.

    Reply
    • admin says

      October 7, 2020 at 2:33 am

      If you are allowed, just right click on the Chromebook desktop and select “change wallpaper.”

      If your school implemented this blog post, you may not be able to select your own wallpaper design.

      Reply
  5. *_63#"|+)(^ says

    February 2, 2021 at 6:50 pm

    go to this website ad you will be rewarded companyforyouthsome.com

    Reply
  6. jazion hines says

    January 24, 2022 at 12:42 pm

    thank you

    Reply
  7. Joe says

    February 25, 2022 at 7:11 pm

    Thanks for giving my power tripping admin the idea!!!!!

    Reply
  8. daniel says

    March 22, 2022 at 4:03 pm

    lame, its doesn’t work for me

    Reply
    • John R. Sowash says

      March 22, 2022 at 4:56 pm

      You are a student. These instructions only work if your at a district IT administrator.

      Reply
  9. Hannah Lafever says

    September 22, 2022 at 2:06 pm

    Is it possible for admin to create a possible bank of wallpapers, so students may choose from a select list?

    Reply
    • John R. Sowash says

      September 22, 2022 at 4:23 pm

      Interesting idea!

      No, at this time there isn’t a way to provision wallpapers, you can only select from the options provided by Google.

      I like the idea though and I think this is something Google Should add!

      Reply
  10. nick says

    May 15, 2023 at 11:58 pm

    will this work on a school cromebook

    Reply
    • John R. Sowash says

      May 16, 2023 at 3:17 pm

      This will only work on a school Chromebook.

      Reply
  11. mattew says

    October 9, 2024 at 4:27 am

    so it only works on chorm and apple?

    Reply

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