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Solid background and wallpaper on iOS 7

By default, iOS 7 has some fancy wallpapers included, but sometimes you just want a simple solid color.  This will be a lot more efficient as we only need to store a single pixel in memory, and you can remove transparency effects to reduce some strain on graphics processing (set opacity to 1).

You can choose a dark color which is a lot easier on your display and battery life, and it also helps the new flat icons stand out a lot more against the background.  Another added bonus, is that it’s much friendlier on your eyes when using it at night, and will provide a good amount of contrast in bright sunlight.

I’ll take any and every performance improvement I can take when running iOS 7 on an iPhone 4 (non-S)…

  1. Open Mobile Safari (web browser) and go to http://www.1x1px.me
  2. Tap the colored box, or enter a color number that you’d like to use as the background or wallpaper (setting opacity to 1 will remove any transparency effect)
  3. Tap the Download button – the next screen will look blank – give it a minute to load then proceed
    20140123-090852.jpg
  4. Tap the Share button (box with up arrow)
  5. Choose Save Image (box with down arrow)
    20140123-091037.jpg
  6. Go to Photos app (from the homescreen)
  7. Find the color image you just saved – it should be the first picture in your Camera Roll
  8. Tap the Share button  (box with up arrow)
  9. The color image should be selected, tap Next
  10. In the bottom of the Share screen, choose Use as Wallpaper
    20140123-091102.jpg
  11. Tap Set
  12. Choose whether you want it to be just on your Lock Screen, Home Screen, or both.
    20140123-091217.jpg

Enjoy!

Initial idea taken from ominx at macrumors.