Transcription
In 2024, the biggest tech reviewer on YouTube, launched his own app. And within hours, his own audience turned on him. Then, the rest of YouTube was reviewing his app. $50 a year, ads, and something much worse. And all of it for… wallpapers? This is the rise and fall of Panels.
It all began in September 2024, in his annual iPhone review. If you're unfamiliar with Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD, his tech videos pull millions of views. But this video started a bit differently. If you've watched enough MKBHD, you know the aesthetic is basically half the video. And I definitely vibe with it. It's hard to describe, but I'd call it a modern, minimalist aesthetic. Watching his videos sorta feels like being in an Apple store, just with a bit more color. It's not for everyone, but for many, the aesthetic and visuals are the best parts of his videos.
So, on the surface, a curated app filled with his wallpapers sounded great. Artists were brought in to make work specifically for the platform, and they would get a 50/50 split. And the wallpapers themselves genuinely looked great. The product made sense for his brand, gave something back to artists, and answered a question his audience had been asking for years: where do you get your wallpapers.
But there was a big problem. You might have caught it in the top right of his pitch. The price, it was $50. Now, to be fair, that was an annual subscription, but if you wanted monthly, it was $11.99 a month or over $140 a year. And here’s the thing, you can Google "4K wallpapers" or go on Reddit to get infinite results for free. But even if you wanted to pay for premium art, $12 a month? For a bit of context, YouTube premium is a similar $13.99, which I think has much more value. Amazon Prime is $14.99 a month, the cheapest Disney+ and Netflix plans are $11.99 and $7.99 a month. Another app: WallpaperZ is just $3 a month, and its images are in 8k instead of 4k. Even as good as Panels might be, $11.99 a month for wallpapers just felt absurd.
And fans agreed. The backlash was immediate. "Bro got so used to being rich that he thinks everybody has $50 for a wallpaper app" "You either die a hero or you live long enough to create panels app" "I'd rather buy WinRAR than 50 bucks for a wallpaper". I don't know anybody who's bought WinRAR. Shows how bad this all was. And that's where it probably should have ended. But little did Marques know, this was just the beginning. It turns out, there was something much worse than the price…
For each clip please mention channel name in lower third. The backlash came rolling in, and it was for much more than just the pricing. The free tier might honestly have been worse than the $50 tier. You can't even get 4K by watching two ads. You only get standard definition, aka 1920x1080. Plus, some parts of the app were just weird. Memes began to spread, and posts about Marques charging $50 for the color "orange". This feels like Apple pricing logic. Though some of these memes were pretty good. But it was clear he had misread the room.
The pricing wasn't even the full problem. It was what users saw when they downloaded the app. When you first opened the app, Apple gave you a popup saying "Allow Panels to track activity across other companies' apps and websites?" You might have seen this a few times. It happens when an app has advertising and to show curated ads. But, those who dug a little deeper, saw that Panels had a pretty concerning privacy report card: Under "data used to track you", across other apps and websites, it includes location, identifiers, diagnostics, and usage data. Expensive subscription. Unskippable ads. Aggressive data collection. For wallpapers.
People's disappointment and frustration kept brewing And, the whole thing was quite ironic. Back in 2016 Marques tweeted *"Golden rule #1 of the internet: Never try to charge for something that was already free." "is this in response to something?" "it's for future reference" It sure was, Marques.
Eventually, the backlash, the pressure, and the discourse, was too much. Marques made a post on X: "First thing we're doing is fixing the excessive data disclosures, as people rightfully brought up" "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." Then, a few weeks later, he made a whole video just to address the backlash. This price change is honestly great. For the privacy concerns, Marques said "Another blunder by us," "This was way too broad." It was apparently based on the app's ad service, AdMob, and "just to be safe, we just checked way too many boxes." You can also use the app without making an account. But Daringfireball.net pointed out that Panels didn't actually use your GPS location, just your IP address, which Apple still classifies as "location". For those looking for a service like this, $2 a month is actually good value.
And that's the tragedy about Panels. Even with the great price change, it was too little too late. The damage was done. Not just to Panels, but to Marques. And unfortunately, "that kind of value" Marques promised, would never come… People moved on, Panels got its pricing update among other things. But the app never really recovered its footing. Any chance it really had was gone.
Then, in December 2025, just over a year after launch, Marques put out another Panels update. "I'm sure its 10 subscribers are very upset 🙄" Speaking of subscribers, we’re working on getting to 1 million, and I would really appreciate it if you hit the subscribe button. The video was unlisted, the comments were turned off, and a few of his reasons were a bit strange. There was some goodwill in the shutdown though: the code would be open-source on GitHub, which is neat. And all active subscriptions would be refunded.
"The target market for this is insanely small. Most people don't download a wallpaper app. This is for those who have been asking. If you're not into it, don't worry about it" He wasn't wrong, exactly. But "not for you" only works when the product is airtight for the people it is for. Panels had some objectively bad flaws. And some people had opted to call it a "scam". Though, I'm not sure if that's an accurate description. Linus is right here; if the app tells you what it costs and you choose to buy it, "scam" isn't quite the word. Though that doesn't mean the value was good.
More than anything, the whole thing was a bit weird, especially for someone who seems to value polish like Marques. I love the way this Reddit user puts it: "Super sloppy launch with all the privacy [stuff] and I have zero idea how that subscription price passed one meeting never mind actually made it to launch. They def overestimated the demand for wallpapers. 99% of the people I know either have a picture of their spouse/partner/kids or just set and forget a default one on day one."
I don't actually think Marques made Panels out of greed. It was born from a very real creator instinct: people kept asking about wallpapers, so why not build something around that? The audience was there. The question was there. The brand fit was there. But when you charge people money and put your name on your own product, you have to be careful. People will hold you to a high standard. And for Panels, the execution, pricing, ad design, privacy optics, it was all sloppy. None of it lined up with what his audience expected from him.
"I do feel bad for YouTubers in general. Every time I see posts on X saying 'I have a lot of thoughts, video tomorrow' they're in the state of attempting to monetize everything they can because that's the only thing they can monetize in their career. It's especially bad, given his entire brand is reviewing tech products, and part of his success is from being honest and authentic. He'll be critical to any brand, even if he's a bit biased towards Apple sometimes. But now, after Panels, many people don't trust his content anymore.
The closer you look at Panels, the more it almost makes sense. A curated wallpaper platform, artist revenue splits, and a discovery layer that goes beyond just scrolling Google Images, that's a real idea. For a specific kind of user, one who genuinely cares about where their wallpapers come from and who made them, this could have been a useful niche product. But that's the thing, niche. At $1.99 a month, maybe it works. But $12? I don't think so.
All things considered though, for YouTube controversy, you can do much worse than Panels. It wasn't a scam, just a miscalculation. It makes sense when you consider how much power Marques' reviews have. Like when the EV company he reviewed went under just months later. Click here to learn the rest of the story.