Hello it’s Jacob here and in today’s iOS #QuickTip I’m going to teach you how to create Transparent Widgets.

This means you can place your app icons anywhere on your Home Screen.

Okay, before we get started we need to make sure that our wallpaper has Perspective Zoom turned off.

So I’m going to jump into my Photos App.

I’m going to choose this lovely wallpaper from Basic Apple Guy (I’ll link it down below).

From here I’m going to press Export and Save As Wallpaper.

At the bottom of my Wallpaper picker I’m going to turn off Perspective Zoom, then I can position my image as I want before saving that as my Wallpaper for my Home Screen and my Lock Screen.

Okay let’s come out of Photos now and you’ll see that my Wallpaper has changed.

The trick to Transparent Widgets is to use an app from the App Store.

Now there are quite a few different options, but a lot of them have In-App Purchases and are a little bit sneaky.

I really like this one called MD Blank (but they all work in a similar way).

When I open up the app there are two placeholders for two different Wallpapers – one in Light Mode and one in Dark Mode.

Now the way this works is that we’re going to get a screenshot of our Home Screen with no icons on it, and then load them into the app so it can generate some Widgets using the exact same part of the Wallpaper that will be in the place of a normal Widget.

So come out of the app to get to the Home Screen and you’re going to tap and hold to go into what we call ‘jiggle mode’.

Now this is clever because if you swipe all the way to the right you’ll get a blank Home Screen with no icons.

From here simply take a screenshot, press Done in the top corner, and then we’re going to flick down to Control Center.

Turn on Dark Mode (which darkens that Wallpaper slightly) and then repeat that process again.

Tap and hold to go into ‘jiggle mode’, swipe all the way to the right to get a blank screen and then take a screenshot.

Okay, I’ll press done and I’ll jump back into MD Blank the app.

Again the next step is really simple – all we’re going to do is tap onto those placeholders and choose those two screenshots from our Photo Library.

Make sure you get Light and Dark the right way around.

And when you’ve done that you’re actually finished with the app for now entirely so swipe up and go back to the Home Screen.

And now you want to decide where you’re going to put your blank Widget.

So one more time I’m going to tap and hold to go into ‘jiggle mode’ and I’m going to press the Plus button in the top corner to add a new Widget.

From here you want to scroll down to the list of apps and it should be right at the top underneath a Smart Stack.

You’ll notice there’s no name for the app on this screen.

If there was you’d see the name underneath the Widget and that would ruin the illusion.

So tap onto that icon that we saw earlier and from here you can choose a Small, Medium or Large size Widget.

These can be placed anywhere on your Home Screen.

To start with I’ll grab the Large Widget and I’m going to drag that up and put it on my Home Screen.

In fact I’m going to put it inside of the Smart Stack that’s there already – that means I can swipe up through the Widgets.

Sometimes I might get the Weather, or my Calendar, or I could have it blank.

If I swipe and choose that one you’ll see straight away it’s matched what image should be there and it looks like it’s a completely invisible part of my Home Screen which is awesome.

But what if you don’t want to put your Widget right in the very top?

Well we can customise exactly what part of the Wallpaper shows up in that Widget.

I’ll go onto my first page of icons now and again I’ll go into ‘jiggle mode’ and I’ll add a Widget.

Finding that same app, this time I’ll pull up a small Widget and I’ll position it right in the middle of my Home Screen.

And you’ll notice that suddenly on that part of the Wallpaper it doesn’t look so good anymore.

But don’t worry!

When you come out of ‘jiggle mode’, tap and hold on that Widget and then you can press Edit Widget.

On that Edit screen you can choose what position your Widget occupies on the Home Screen.

So in the Vertical Position option it’s on the middle row because it’s not at the top and then Horizontally it’s on the left hand side now.

When I come off the Edit screen you’ll notice that that Wallpaper now fits perfectly where the widget is, creating the illusion of transparency.

I’ll do this one more time and put a Widget in the top corner.

And when it’s there I’m going to tap and hold and press Edit, and then I can choose the horizontal position to be the right hand side.

And there you have it – now I can start creating some really interesting layouts for my app icons and my other Widgets by using this transparency effect – and when you go into Dark Mode the widgets will change automatically as well.

I hope you found this #QuickTip helpful and hopefully taught you something new you can do on your iPhone.

If it did please do press the Like button down below and maybe even Subscribe.

There are hundreds more iPhone and iPad #QuickTips on my Channel.

I’ll see you next time!