Public domain, CC0 and CC BY: what the labels actually let you do
A plain-language guide to the open licences behind every wallpaper on this site, and how to give credit properly.
Every wallpaper on this site carries a licence label. They're short, but they make a real difference to what you're allowed to do with an image. Here's a plain-language guide. It isn't legal advice, but it's enough to use open images with confidence.
Copyright is the default
In almost every country, a photograph is protected by copyright from the moment it's taken. No registration or © symbol is needed. Finding an image online doesn't make it free to use. Without a licence or an exception in law, copying and sharing it requires the photographer's permission. Open licences exist so creators can give that permission to everyone in advance.
Public domain
A work in the public domain has no copyright at all. That happens when copyright expires, when the creator gives it up, or when the law excludes it from the start. In the United States, for example, works created by federal employees as part of their jobs aren't protected by copyright, which is why so much NASA, National Park Service and Fish and Wildlife Service photography can be reused freely.
CC0
CC0 is a tool from Creative Commons that lets a creator place their work as close to the public domain as the law allows. You can copy, modify, share and use a CC0 image commercially without asking and without giving credit. Credit is still a kind gesture, and it helps other people find the source.
CC BY
CC BY allows almost anything, including commercial use and changes, on one condition: attribution. A good credit follows the "TASL" pattern:
- Title of the work,
- Author, linked to their profile where possible,
- Source, linked to the original page,
- Licence, linked to the licence text, plus a note if you changed the image (for example "cropped").
Every wallpaper page here includes a ready-made credit line in this format, with a button to copy it.
The licences we avoid
Some Creative Commons licences add restrictions. NC (NonCommercial) forbids commercial use, and ND (NoDerivatives) forbids sharing modified versions. Because we crop images for different screens and the site is supported by advertising, we don't publish NC or ND images.
We also avoid photos from "free" stock platforms whose own licences forbid redistributing their images on wallpaper sites, even though those photos are free to use in your own projects.
What a licence doesn't cover
Copyright licences cover only copyright. They don't give you rights to trademarks or logos in a photo, and they don't override the privacy or publicity rights of people shown. That's one reason we focus on nature and wildlife.
Using a wallpaper
For a personal desktop or phone background, any image here is fine to use. If you plan to use one in a commercial project, open its page, check the licence, follow the link to the original source to confirm it, and use the credit line provided.
