Gorgeous iPhone wallpapers give your phone a magical look

iPhone wallpaper

Years ago, a smartphone user discovered an interesting glitch in Apple’s iOS software. By creating an iPhone wallpaper that was just one pixel in size, an iPhone would stretch it to cover the entire screen and some interesting effects would be displayed as a result. Namely, the dock and folder backgrounds would completely disappear, giving the iPhone a cool minimalistic look.

It just so happened that this discovery was made all the way back in 2016, which is when Apple released the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus in a new Jet Black finish. Applying this special black wallpaper on a Jet Black iPhone gave it a sleek new look, and people absolutely loved it.

Throughout the years, the person who created those original glitch wallpapers has created a number of other unique wallpapers for Apple’s iPhones. Apple fixed the bug that enabled those original glitch wallpapers, but after two years they’re finally back and fully functional on Apple’s latest iPhone models.

The most well-known recent wallpaper from the collection is a nifty one that traces the outer edges of the iPhone’s display, highlighting Apple’s notch design in a cool way. Those wallpapers were updated for Apple’s new iPhone models, but now they’re back with a new twist: The person who created them has found a way to combine them with a series of “magic” wallpapers that change the colors of the iPhone’s dock and folder backgrounds.

An Apple enthusiast named Hideaki who goes by @heyeased on Twitter is the man responsible for all of these nifty iPhone wallpapers, and he often emails us when he releases new creations. As you might have guessed by now, he just sent us a new email to show off his latest creations.

This time around, @heyeased combined two of his most popular lines of iPhone wallpapers to create a new series that’s very cool. As you can see in the image above, the new wallpapers include @heyeased’s signature outline of the iPhone’s display. These wallpapers are called “X Style” wallpapers. But if you look closer at the photo above, you’ll notice that the background of my dock is pink, and the background of my folders is green. This design element is from the “Magic Color UI” wallpaper line, and now it has been combined with @heyeased’s X Style series. The results are very cool and unique, and they’re available in sizes for the iPhone XR, iPhone X/XS, and iPhone XS Max.

As is always the case, you’ll have to adjust a setting on your iPhone to make these wallpapers work. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and then tap “Reduce Transparency.” Then just tap the toggle to enable it. Also, be sure to choose “Still” when applying each wallpaper, and not “Perspective.”

There are plenty of different color combinations available for download on @heyeased’s website, and they’re all completely free. Of note, if there are color combinations you want but you don’t see on the site, just open one in the photo editor of your choice and you’ll see exactly how they work. The dock background color can be found at the bottom of each wallpaper, while the folder background color is at the top. Change either or both of those colors to create the palette of your choosing.