What Are Spatial Scenes on iPhone?

Spatial Scenes are one of the headline Lock Screen features in iOS 26. They take an ordinary flat photo and turn it into a layered, almost holographic image that shifts subtly as you move or tilt your iPhone. Hold the phone still and it looks like a normal wallpaper; pick it up and angle it, and the foreground appears to float in front of the background, giving the screen a real sense of depth.

It is a small effect, but a striking one. The first time a photo on your Lock Screen seems to lean and parallax as you tilt the phone, it genuinely reads as three-dimensional.

How Spatial Scenes work

When you set a photo as your Lock Screen in iOS 26, the system analyzes the image on-device and builds a sense of its depth — separating the subject in the foreground from the scene behind it, and reconstructing the parts of the background that the subject would otherwise hide. As you tilt the iPhone, it shifts those layers against each other by tiny amounts. That relative movement is what your eye reads as depth.

All of this happens locally on the device. Your photos are not uploaded anywhere to create the effect, and the processing uses the iPhone’s own neural hardware. The motion is driven by the phone’s motion sensors, so the scene responds to how you actually hold and move it.

A holographic feel, not a video

It is worth being precise about what Spatial Scenes are not. They are not a video and not an animation that plays on a loop. There is no clip running in the background. The image is still a still photo — iOS is simply re-projecting its layers in real time based on the angle of your phone. That is why it can feel “holographic” rather than like a film clip.

Spatial Scenes vs Depth Effect vs Live wallpapers

iOS now has three depth-related Lock Screen features, and they are easy to mix up.

• Depth Effect lifts the main subject of your wallpaper in front of the clock, so the subject overlaps the numbers. It is a layering trick within a flat image. Read our full Depth Effect explainer for the details.
• Live wallpapers play actual motion — a short video or motion photo that animates when you wake or long-press the screen.
• Spatial Scenes keep a still photo but add parallax that responds to tilt, creating the holographic depth.

You can think of Depth Effect as “subject over clock,” Live as “motion video,” and Spatial Scenes as “still photo with 3D parallax.” They solve different problems and can feel quite different in use.

What you need to use them

Spatial Scenes require iOS 26 and a reasonably recent iPhone — iPhone 12 and newer — because the depth reconstruction leans on the device’s neural processing. You enable the effect in the Lock Screen editor when you set a photo, and you can toggle the spatial, or 3D, effect off if you prefer a flat image. If you want the steps in detail, see our iOS 26 wallpaper customization guide.

The best results come from photos with a clear foreground subject and a distinct background — a person, a pet, an object on a table. The more separation between the subject and what is behind it, the more convincing the parallax. Flat, busy, or textureless images give the system less to work with.

Why it matters for your wallpaper choices

Because the effect depends on real depth in the image, not every wallpaper is a good Spatial Scene candidate. Portraits, close-up objects, and scenes with obvious near-and-far layers tend to shine. Abstract gradients and flat patterns mostly stay flat, which is fine if that is the look you want.

If you want images that are built to take advantage of depth, browse the Wallpaper Hub library or the Depth Effect collection, where the foreground and background are already cleanly separated. That separation is exactly what Spatial Scenes use to build their parallax.

FAQ

Are Spatial Scenes the same as Live wallpapers? No. Live wallpapers play a short motion video, while Spatial Scenes keep a still photo and add depth that shifts as you tilt the phone.

Do Spatial Scenes upload my photos anywhere? No. The depth processing happens entirely on-device using your iPhone’s own hardware; nothing is sent to a server to create the effect.

Can I turn the effect off? Yes. In the Lock Screen editor you can toggle the spatial or 3D effect off and keep the photo as a flat wallpaper.

Which photos work best? Images with a clear foreground subject and a separate background — portraits, pets, close-up objects — produce the strongest depth.

Spatial Scenes are a quiet but genuinely new way to experience a photo on your Lock Screen: still when you hold it steady, alive with depth the moment you move. If you want a starting library that is already primed for it, Get Wallpaper Hub on the App Store.