Daily Voice
By Cecilia Levine From Daily Voice
New Jersey tech megastar Marques Brownlee is officially powering down his expensive and highly controversial wallpaper app called Panels after what he called a rollercoaster of a year.
Brownlee, who is known professionally as MKBHD and has 20.6 million YouTube subscribers, made the announcement in an unlisted video on Nov. 30, telling fans: “After a lot of deliberation, I’ve decided to sunset the Panels app this week.”
The idea started as a simple fix for the nonstop question fans asked him: "Where’d you get that wallpaper?" What began as a small utility “grew into something that could support artists and platform a lot of this stuff and become this vibrant ecosystem,” 31-year-old Brownlee, a Maplewood, NJ native, said.
Panels launched to massive attention — and controversy. The app cost $12 per month, and early data-permission prompts stirred immediate backlash. Brownlee responded on Sept. 24, 2024, writing, “Part of building in public is getting mass feedback immediately, which is pretty dope.” He assured users the team was fixing the “excessive data disclosures,” adding, “We’d never actually ask for your location, internet history, etc.”
He also addressed pricing concerns, saying, “As far as pricing, I hear you! It’s our own personal challenge to work to deliver that kind of value for the premium version.”
Even with the rough start, Panels became the #1 Photos app in both app stores and logged more than 2 million wallpaper downloads by the end of the summer.
But ultimately, the app couldn’t keep going.
“At the end of the day it wasn’t able to sustain,” Brownlee said. “We knew it was niche but we made mistakes in making our first app and ultimately we weren’t able to turn it into the vision I had.”
He thanked the artists who partnered with him and the users who stuck around, calling the project “a spark of fun.”
Panels will officially shut down on Dec. 31, 2025, according to its statement. All user data will be deleted afterward, annual subscribers will receive prorated refunds, and the entire codebase will be released as open source so others can build their own wallpaper apps.
