Google Launches Custom Themes For Gmail, Lets You Choose Your Own Background Photos

For a while now, Gmail users have been able to choose between various themes to personalize their inboxes. Starting today, you will be able to add even more of a personal touch to Gmail, as Google now allows you to set your own background images in Gmail. Google actually offered a similar option for Gmail before it launched its redesign last year, but this time around, Google – of course – also offers a deeper Google+ integration and allows you to upload your own photos directly or select your backgrounds from your Google+ photos.

Google is rolling this new feature out slowly, so it may be a few days before you get to choose your favorite cat picture as a background image in Gmail.

For the rest of your interface, you get to choose between a light and a dark theme when you use your own photos. This will hopefully allow you to still see the rest of the interface, but given that Google is apparently using a lot of transparency here, you’ll probably have to try a few different images to find the right combination.

Google will also select a number of images to feature in its redesigned Gmail themes tab. It’s not clear how the company plans to select these, but it looks like these are images from Google+.