[myfonj]

Last time I used an Android (Galaxy) phone, to have a solid pitch-black background (which I thought made sense for modern phone displays energy-wise, besides looking pretty swell), I had to download — yes, D-O-W-N-L-O-A-D — some black image from some "Galaxy Store" thing or whatnot to achieve that. It was free, but it seemed like an exception there.

Something that should be a default option, or a single-tap switch in settings, turned into a chore consisting of a period of agonising disbelief, doubt, denial, search, and eventually bitter acceptance.

[whynotmaybe]

I had to take a picture with my finger on the camera to have a black image to use as background.

[kjkjadksj]

I don’t know if that would do it or just return your dark current image.

The best thing to do is just take a file same as your screen resolution into your favorite image editor and fill it with actual true black. Save as png and send to phone.

[myfonj]

Was not sure if sensor in pitch dark would catch some other radiation and output some pixel "grain" seen from high ISO or not, but from what I tried, visually the photo seems pretty black, so the method seems to be surprisingly usable.

As for "same image as your screen resolution": screenshot sounds like the exact fitting thing here. As a challenge, tried making screenshot black using stock Samsung "Gallery" and it seems that repeated Edit - Brightness: -100 - Save as copy, then open the copy and goto back to Edit can do the trick as well, after four or so copies. (Copies, because there is no way to re-apply same effect on the same photo, apparently.)

[Scarblac]

That's actually hilarious, so much high tech involved to get a dark background.

[drewolbrich]

Another way is to do a Google image search for "black".

[whynotmaybe]

It should enter the competition of the most convoluted ways to have a black background on your phone.

[gymbeaux]

A black background on an AMOLED display (something Samsung Galaxy phones tended to have) would use less energy because “pitch black” on AMOLED is literally turning the underlying pixels off- with LED displays, that’s not possible.

[layer8]

It’s proportional to brightness on OLED. You save a lot with a dark background/dark mode already, it doesn’t need to be specifically black.

[graemep]

I use an alternative home screen app to deal with stuff like this.