How to use the Shortcuts app to automatically create custom iOS wallpapers

There are a variety of unique ways to harness the power of the Shortcuts app, which has gained immense popularity since iOS 14 was released last week. Now Federico Viticci at MacStories has put together a new WallCreator shortcut that enables creating custom iPhone and iPad wallpapers with gradients and solid colors.

The new WallCreator shortcut can generate a custom wallpaper with a solid color or a gradient with just a few taps. Once you add the shortcut and run it, WallCreator will ask you to to choose a wallpaper type:

• Radom Color
• Radom Gradient
• Random Gradient (Top to Bottom)
• Gradient – Left to Right
• Gradient – Diagonal
• Gradient – Top to Bottom

The Random Color, Random Gradient, and Random Gradient (Top to Bottom) options will automatically generate a wallpaper for your device based on a completely random color. Once the wallpaper is generated, you’ll be able to preview it before saving it to your device.

Meanwhile, the other four options rely on you to pick your own colors, which can be entered in their English names or Hex codes. Viticci explains how it works:

You don’t need to worry about anything else: WallCreator will create the right version of a wallpaper for different iPhone and iPad models automatically, without having to specify any option; at the end of the shortcut, you can preview the newly-generated wallpaper and, if you like it, save it as an image to the Photos app. Otherwise, you can tell WallCreator you want to generate another image and start over.

This is an incredibly cool implementation of the Shortcuts app, and it comes as more and more people are using the Shortcuts app to personalize their iOS 14 home screens with custom app icons paired with new widgets.

You can add the WallCreator shortcut to your Shortcuts app over at MacStories. While you’re there, be sure to check out the MacStories Shortcuts Archive for more shortcuts to try out.

Note that you’ll need to ensure you have Untrusted Shortcuts allowed before adding the WallCreator shortcut.