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What is Simple Desktops?
Simple Desktops is a curated wallpaper site built around one idea: backgrounds that "make your computer beautiful without distraction." Rather than photographic scenes or busy illustrations, it collects flat, minimal designs—clean shapes, restrained color, and lots of empty space—so icons and windows stay readable on top of them.
What you'll find there
- Minimal, flat-style wallpapers, often with a single motif or a few geometric forms. The page lists examples such as "Raspberry Pi," "Loading Wallpaper," "xubuntu," "Complexism," and "ROUTE 66," credited to individual designers.
- Designs aimed at multiple devices. The navigation points to Mac, iOS, and Android sections alongside the desktop collection, so the same aesthetic carries over to phones and tablets.
- Community submissions. There's a Submit link, and the site describes itself as a collection you can browse and contribute to, with an About and Contact page and a @simpledesktops account for updates.
- A subscribe option for keeping up with new additions.
Who it suits
It's a good fit if you treat the desktop as a work surface: developers, writers, and anyone who keeps many windows open and finds detailed wallpapers visually noisy. The trade-off is variety—if you want photography, texture, or dramatic imagery, this style will feel sparse. Minimal wallpapers also show smudges and stray icons more readily, so pairing them with a tidy desktop layout helps.
A practical next step
Start with the device you look at most. Pick one wallpaper for your laptop that leaves the icon area uncluttered, then check the iOS or Android section so your phone matches. If you want a broader pool of minimal designs beyond this collection, Unsplash and Wallhaven let you filter by style and resolution, though curation is looser than a hand-picked set like this one.
How do I submit my own wallpaper to Simple Desktops?
Submit it through the "Submit" link in the site's main navigation, which sits alongside Browse, About and Contact on Simple Desktops. The gallery is described as "a collection of wallpapers designed to make your computer beautiful without distraction," so judge your work against that bar before sending it in. Existing entries such as "Raspberry Pi," "Loading Wallpaper" and "ROUTE 66" show the house style: flat, minimal, uncluttered compositions rather than busy illustrations or photo collages.
What to prepare before you submit
- A clean, distraction-free design. Few elements, restrained colour, and a clear focal point work best; the "Complexism" and "saturn-flat" pieces are useful reference points.
- The right dimensions and crop for desktop screens. Check your file at common widescreen resolutions and make sure nothing important is cut off at the edges.
- A title and a credit name, since each listing shows a title and a creator (for example, "xubuntu By: jerli").
- A file format that holds up as a background. Avoid heavy compression artefacts that show in flat colour fields.
Practical next step
Open the Submit page and read any instructions there before uploading, then compare your draft side by side with three or four current wallpapers at full screen. If yours reads as busier or noisier than the surrounding gallery, simplify it first—resubmitting a cleaner version later is easier than guessing what an editor will trim.
Are the wallpapers on Simple Desktops free to download and use?
Yes. Simple Desktops presents its wallpapers as a free collection to browse and download, and the site also accepts submissions from contributors. The page describes the collection as wallpapers "designed to make your computer beautiful without distraction," and the listed designs (for example Raspberry Pi, xubuntu, Complexism and ROUTE 66) are shown with creator credits rather than prices or purchase links.
A practical caveat: free to download is not automatically the same as free for every use. The site's own About page is the place to confirm licensing terms, and if you plan to reuse an image beyond a personal desktop—on a blog, in a product mockup or in marketing material—check the individual creator's terms or ask for permission. For everyday personal use on a Mac, Windows or Linux machine, the collection is intended for exactly that.
As a next step, open the About page before downloading a batch, and note the creator name shown with each wallpaper so you can credit it if you share a screenshot publicly.
What image resolution and aspect ratio should I choose for my Mac, iOS, or Android device?
Simple Desktops does not publish a single recommended resolution; it groups wallpapers by platform (Mac, iOS, Android) and lets you pick per device. Treat the device's native screen resolution and aspect ratio as your target, because a wallpaper is only pixel-perfect when it matches both.
Practical starting points
- Mac laptops and desktops: match the display's native pixel size and its wide aspect ratio. A wallpaper that is slightly larger than native scales down cleanly; one that is smaller will be stretched and look soft.
- iPhone and iPad: choose the exact native pixel dimensions of your model. iOS crops and shifts wallpapers for the lock screen and home screen, so keep important detail away from the edges.
- Android phones: native resolution varies widely by manufacturer, and many launchers apply a parallax crop. Pick an image at or just above your screen's pixel size, with a simple center.
Choosing between aspect ratios
| Device type | Typical shape | What to favor |
|---|---|---|
| Mac display | Wide (16:10 or 16:9) | Horizontal compositions, detail spread across the width |
| iPhone | Tall (roughly 19.5:9) | Vertical composition with a clear center |
| iPad | Near 4:3 | Balanced, centered subjects |
| Android phone | Tall, varies by model | Generous margins for launcher cropping |
Concrete scenario
If you want one wallpaper to work across a Mac and an iPhone, pick a minimal design with a single centered element and lots of empty space; Simple Desktops' style—seen in entries like "Raspberry Pi," "Complexism" and "saturn-flat"—suits this well, since simple backgrounds survive cropping better than busy ones.
Next step
Check your device's exact screen resolution in its display settings, then browse the matching platform section on Simple Desktops and pick an image at or above that size. If no exact match exists, choose the closest larger image with a centered subject rather than one with edge-to-edge detail.
How can I subscribe to updates or new wallpaper releases from Simple Desktops?
Simple Desktops offers a Subscribe link in its page footer, alongside its social follow link, so that is the route to check for new wallpaper releases. The site presents itself as a collection of wallpapers "designed to make your computer beautiful without distraction," with categories for Mac, iOS, Android and Raspberry Pi, so a subscription would most likely deliver new minimalist designs as they are added.
Practical next step
Open Simple Desktops, scroll to the footer and use the Subscribe link. If you prefer not to hand over an email address, the site's follow link (it points to a Twitter/X account, @simpledesktops) gives you release announcements without a newsletter signup.
Choosing between the two
- Email subscription: best if you want releases collected in one place and check your inbox regularly; expect occasional mail rather than a feed.
- Social follow: best if you already use that platform and want to see new designs in passing, though posts can get lost in a busy timeline.
For a concrete case: if you maintain a Raspberry Pi or Xubuntu setup and only occasionally want a fresh look, the social follow is the lower-commitment option; if you curate a rotation of desktop images for several machines, the email route is easier to keep track of. Either way, the site also accepts submissions, so browsing the Submit section is a way to see what kinds of designs tend to appear.
What does 'simple' mean in Simple Desktops' design philosophy compared to complex wallpapers?
"Simple" here means visually quiet: wallpapers made to decorate a screen without competing with the icons, windows and text on top of it. The site describes its collection as wallpapers "designed to make your computer beautiful without distraction," and the page's examples support that reading—flat or reduced subjects such as "Route 66," "saturn-flat," "Traffic" and "Complexism," alongside OS-themed pieces like "xubuntu," "Fedora OS" and "Raspberry Pi."
What "simple" is not
It is not a claim that the artwork is crude or unskilled. The contrast is with complex wallpaper—dense photo collages, busy illustrations or high-contrast scenes with many focal points—where the background keeps pulling your eye away from the desktop's actual work. A simple wallpaper usually has a clear subject, restrained palette and generous empty space, so it reads at a glance and then recedes.
Choosing between the two
- Pick simple if you keep many icons, use small windows or read long text on the desktop; a calm background protects legibility.
- Pick complex if the wallpaper is itself the point—a personal photo, a detailed illustration you want to look at—and you keep the desktop mostly empty.
- Consider the display: a busy wallpaper can look fine on a large, high-resolution monitor but cluttered on a small laptop screen.
A practical test: set a candidate wallpaper, open a document and a few windows, and see whether your eye still drifts to the background. If it does, the wallpaper is working against the desktop rather than for it. Browsing Simple Desktops gives a ready set of examples of the restrained end of that spectrum to compare against your usual choice.
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