iOS 7’s parallax effect is supposed to give your iPhone or iPad a sense of depth as you move it around, but getting it right takes a little work. CapableBits thinks it has one solution with its new app, Wallgram.
Wallgram, spotted by The Mac Observer, attempts to turn any photo on Instagram into an iOS-friendly wallpaper image. You can use it with your Instagram account, but you can also find other Instagram photos to use as wallpaper backgrounds via the app’s Explore tab. (And no, you don’t need an Instagram account to use the app.)
In my quick hands-on, the app seemed easy enough to use—simply sign in to your Instagram account (if you have one) and select a photo from your account or from a selection of other photos published to Instagram. It’ll go ahead and add a modified version of that photo to your Photo Library, which you can then set as your iPhone’s wallpaper.
There are some obvious caveats, though. Since Instagram photos are fairly small, Wallgram compensates by placing a blown-up, blurred-out version of your photo behind the main image. This method works OK, but it isn’t ideal. It’s a little like watching standard-definition video on an HDTV. Also, it only works with Instagram right now, so you can’t use it with photos from other services such as Flickr.
I found the app to be a little crash-prone on my iPhone 5c: It sent me back to my home screen three times in the few minutes that I played with it. Annoying.
Personally, I’d like to see an app that makes it easier to create custom parallax wallpapers by providing more tools for selecting and cropping the area you want to use for your wallpaper than what iOS 7 provides. Wallgram, however, is not that app.
If Wallgram sounds like something you’d like to play around with, though, you can purchase it from the App Store for 99 cents.
