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How to organize your Pinterest boards so they work as a desktop wallpaper
Published · Lucas Viegas · 7 min read · Pinterest labels checked on help.pinterest.com
Give the wallpaper its own public board with one theme, keep it to 40 to 120 sharp, tall pins, move strays out with Pinterest’s Organize tool, and prune monthly. Sections help you sort; a wallpaper app reads the whole board.
Below, the working detail.
Why does one theme per board matter for a wallpaper?
On Pinterest a board is a filing cabinet. On a desktop it is the picture: the whole board gets composed onto your screen a screenful at a time, so one that mixes kitchen renovations with running shoes looks like a shopping tab, not a mood. Give the wallpaper its own board, named for a mood rather than a source, and be strict about what goes in.
How do I set up a wallpaper board, step by step?
Twenty minutes, once, using Pinterest’s current web labels.
pinterest.com in a browser
- 1Create a dedicated public board. Leave Keep this board secret off and name it for a mood, not a source.
- 2Fill it in bulk with Organize. In a source board, click Organize, select pins, click Move, then Save next to the new board.
- 3Move strays out, never delete them. Off-theme pins go to a private holding board the same way; deleted pins cannot be recovered.
- 4Cull for the screen, not for Pinterest. Drop small images, screenshots, quote cards, long infographics and white frames.
- 5Land between 40 and 120 pins. Enough to keep changing, few enough that every pin is one you would print.
- 6Add a cover and a one-line description. Choose Edit board from the board menu; a described board is easier to prune later.
- 7Copy the board URL for your wallpaper app. Copy pinterest.com/username/board-name/ from the browser into the app. Use a whole board, not a section.
What does a well-set-up wallpaper board look like?
| Area | Do | Don’t | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Theme | One mood per board. | Use the catch-all board. | A screenful of mixed subjects reads as clutter. |
| Privacy | Keep it public. | Expect a private or private group board to work. | Only public boards can be read outside Pinterest. |
| Sections | Use them inside big reference boards. | Point a wallpaper app at one. | Board readers address whole boards; sections have no address. |
| Images | Save 1000 px or more on the long edge, mostly 2:3 and 1:1. | Save thumbnails, screenshots, quote cards, infographics. | Small images blur; tall pins swallow a column. |
| Pruning | Move strays to a private holding board. | Delete to tidy up. | Deleted pins cannot be recovered; moved ones come back. |
What do Pinterest board sections actually do?
Pinterest’s help centre puts it in one line: use board sections to organize Pins within your board. To create one on the web:
- 1Open the board, click the plus icon at the bottom and select Section.
- 2Enter a name and click Add.
- 3Click Organize at the top of the board, select the pins that belong there, click Move, then click Save next to the section.
Sections keep a big reference board sane, but they cannot feed a wallpaper: embeds and wallpaper apps address a board by its owner and name, so a section cannot be used on its own (the make-a-board-public guide explains why). Merging two sections moves the pins and deletes the source; undoing that means moving pins back one by one.
How do I move pins and bulk-edit a board?
Pinterest’s bulk tool is Organize, at the top of a board: select pins, click Move, then Save next to the destination board or section. In the apps, tap Organize, select, tap the arrows icon at the bottom and pick a destination.
It moves rather than copies; to keep a pin on both boards, open it and save it to the second one. For a single pin, Edit Pin in the ellipsis menu changes its board, title or description.
Merge, in the ellipsis menu next to the board name, folds a whole board into another and deletes the source; a secret board merged into a public one becomes public.
Should the wallpaper board be public, secret or a group board?
Pinterest lists three kinds of board: public boards show on your profile and in search; private boards (the settings toggle reads Make this board private, the creation screen still says Keep this board secret) are visible only to you and people you invite; group boards can be either.
For a wallpaper the answer is public, the only kind anything outside Pinterest can read; a private group board is no exception, since an invitation does not publish the board. The exact switch, on web and mobile, is in the guide on making a Pinterest board public.
Public group boards work too; the owner sets collaborator permissions, from Do (almost) everything down to Save and comment, and whatever collaborators add lands on your wall.
Which images and aspect ratios compose well on a wide screen?
Pinterest’s ad specs put a standard image at 2:3, or 1000 by 1500 pixels, and warn that taller pins might get cut off in feeds. On a desktop that portrait bias helps: masonry columns are built for tall images. What breaks it:
- Small images. A tile in a four-column layout on a 2560-pixel display is about 600 pixels wide; a 400-pixel thumbnail arrives soft.
- Extreme heights. A 1:4 infographic swallows a column. Keep pins between roughly 4:5 and 9:16.
- Text and frames. Quote cards, recipe cards, memes and white-bordered pins look like stickers on a wall.
- One loud colour. Ten white kitchens are calm; ten neon posters are a headache.
Pinterest does not let you edit a pin’s image once published, so organizing is choosing.
How many pins is enough?
Fewer than you think. A wallpaper shows a screenful at a time and rotates through the rest, so the board needs enough pins to keep changing and few enough that every one earns its place: between 40 and 120 for most people. Under 40 the same images come round quickly; past a few hundred it becomes a slideshow of things you half-liked once. Pinterest sets no limit on pins and publishes no figure for its cap on boards.
How do I prune a board without losing pins?
Move, do not delete: once a pin is deleted, Pinterest says, it cannot be recovered. Keep a private board called Holding and send tired pins there with Organize.
For boards you are finished with, archive rather than delete: an archived board drops to the bottom of your profile, leaves your public profile and can be unarchived at any time. Deleting a board deletes every pin on it; you get seven days to restore it from Recently deleted, on desktop or Android only.
What does a monthly board routine look like?
Ten minutes a month keeps the board alive.
First of the month
- 1Judge the board on your desktop, not on Pinterest; the wall shows what is wrong faster than the grid.
- 2Move the three weakest pins to Holding with Organize. There are always three.
- 3Add five to ten new pins from the same mood; keep the total inside your range.
- 4Check the board is still public. A collaborator or a stray tap can change it.
Board’s tidy. Now put it on your desktop.
On a Mac, VisionWall is a menu-bar app that reads a public Pinterest board live and composes it into a rotating masonry wallpaper: new pins appear automatically, refreshing every 30 minutes by default (2 minutes to 2 hours). One-time $11.99, no subscription, no account, macOS 13.3 (Ventura) or later, public boards only.
Questions people ask
Can I use one section of a board as the wallpaper?
No. Wallpaper apps and embeds address a whole board by its owner and name; a section has no address of its own. Give its pins a board of their own.
Does the board have to stay public?
Whenever the app reads it, yes; make it private again and nothing outside Pinterest can fetch new pins. If the original must stay private, keep a second, public board.
Is there a limit on how many boards or pins I can have?
No limit on pins, Pinterest says. It caps boards per account without publishing the figure; archiving a board does not reduce that count, deleting one does.
What if I delete a board by mistake?
Pinterest keeps it in Recently deleted for seven days, restorable on desktop or Android. Deleted pins are different: once deleted, a pin cannot be recovered, which is why this post moves pins instead.