SAN FRANCISCO, June 28 -- The wallpaper on your Pixel phone is about to start acting like an iPhone's, and Google is not even trying to hide it.

Code buried inside Android 17 QPR1 Beta 5, which Google rolled out to testers on June 23 with build CP31.260608.007, reveals a feature called Photo Shuffle that mirrors Apple's identically named iOS wallpaper mode almost line for line. Users will be able to pick an album from Google Photos - favourite people, pets, landscapes, whatever they compile - and the lock screen and home screen wallpapers will cycle through those images on a schedule the owner controls. Apple has offered this since iOS 16 in 2022. Google's existing wallpaper rotation, by comparison, picks the photos for you and does not ...