More than two years ago, an Apple enthusiast who goes by @heyeased on Twitter made an iPhone wallpaper that would end up becoming one of the biggest crazes of the year. The wallpaper in question was called “magic black,” and it took advantage of a glitch in iOS to make the backgrounds of folders and the dock completely disappear. The result was the most stealth home screen look anyone had ever seen on an iPhone, and you can see how awesome it looked right here. It just so happened to be the year that Apple introduced its new Jet Black finish on the iPhone 7, in part to help bolster sales since it was reusing a nearly identical iPhone design for the third consecutive year. The combination of the Jet Black finish and this magic black wallpaper resulted in a sleek look that people absolutely adored.
Then after a while, Apple fixed the glitch that enabled the magic black wallpaper. People were upset for a while, but it’s obviously not a terribly big deal in the grand scheme of things. The nifty wallpaper faded from memory and @heyeased continued making other kinds of wallpapers for iPhone users to enjoy. So why are we bringing this up now? Well, we have good news and bad news…
The good news is that @heyeased has discovered a new glitch in iOS 12.1 that has enabled a completely new type of glitch wallpaper that makes the folder and dock backgrounds disappear! He calls his new creation the “eraser wallpaper,” and it’s available in a number of different colors. You can read more about it in a post on his blog.
The bad news is that unfortunately, black is not among the available colors. According to an email from @heyeased, the new iOS 12.1 glitch he exploited in order to create these wallpapers doesn’t work with a black background.
As you can see in the image above, the new eraser wallpapers do exactly what the original magic black wallpaper did back in 2016. When you apply one, it causes the backgrounds of the folders and dock on Apple’s iPhone home screens to disappear. They don’t actually disappear, of course, but instead become the same color as the rest of the wallpaper so that they’re no longer visible.
The new eraser wallpapers are available in 12 different colors for the iPhone X, iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max, and iPhone XR, and you can download them for free right here on @heyeased’s website. 11 different colors are available for iPhone models without a notch, and they can be downloaded here.
To download a wallpaper in any color, simply visit one of the above pages in Safari on your iPhone. Tap the thumbnail of the wallpaper you want, then long-press on the image that opens and save it. Before you Apple the wallpaper though, you’ll have to adjust one setting on your iPhone to make it work. Go to Settings > General > Accessibility and then tap “Reduce Transparency.” Now, simply tap the toggle to enable it. You’ll also need to be on iOS 12.1, and you should choose the “Still” option when applying the wallpaper on your phone.
With that done you can apply the new wallpaper on your home screen and your folder backgrounds and dock will disappear.
In addition to the new eraser wallpaper series, @heyeased also created a second new series called “painter wallpapers.” These wallpapers feature modern patterns in a variety of colors, but they don’t make the dock or folder backgrounds disappear. Instead, they appear in contrasting colors that give the iPhone a totally different but equally impressive look.
The painter wallpaper series might look even better than the eraser series, since the contrasting color schemes really pop on Apple’s bright displays. You can check out the iPhone X/XS/XS Max/XR series right here on @heyeased’s site, and the series for iPhone models without a notch can be found here. There are 20 different pattern and color combinations available for each version.
