iOS 17 wallpapers blurry at top

I have a solution! Go into photos and find the photo you want as your wallpaper. Click the three dots in the upper right hand corner and select duplicate. This way you have the original picture and the one you will use for your wallpaper. Select crop and click on the premade sizes. One of them is called wallpaper. Pick that one and adjust the picture so it’s centered the way you want it. Now when you go into settings, select that cropped photo as your wallpaper. No blurring!

Apple, this feature is so freaking annoying!!! i want to be able to see my whole wallpaper and this new feature makes it impossible for it to look good or aesthetic. i either have to zoom in so close that the image is blurry and cuts out the best parts, or i have to have this hideous blur at the top that also cuts out the best parts. PLEASE change this or at least make it an option to turn it on and off. i swear you guys always add these nonsense features that don’t make any sense. ever heard of the saying “don’t fix it if it ain’t broke”?????? please fix this. it makes me wish i never updated my phone to ios 17. from the looks of it, many other people hate the feature too. give the people what they want!

This is absolutely stupid.

Half of my wallpapers are ruined. Who thought it was a good idea to blur HALF of the image when not zoomed and to not to put a button to switch it off?

Whoever must hate its customers, it's driving me crazy.

I too have spoken with several Apple IT people about this issue and the general consensus has been that this is a new feature that was specifically added to IOS 17. They claim it is so you can see text better especially the time and notification area. This is complete BS to me because I haven't had an issue seeing text before so I don't know why they felt they needed to add this feature. So I was provided with a link during one of the conversations to let Apple know that I don't like this new feature. I was told the more people they get that reports they don't like this feature could possibly lead them in the future to remove with a future update.

Dear Apple, please stop breaking things to fix them later and call them a feature. No one ever types “ducks” and the blur you added thinking it would look good, looks like a garbage. I can’t express how much I dislike apple and its garbage tactics to manipulate the users experience into being subpar. You would think they would learn after a period of a time that certain things are not good to be done, but still, Apple does it anyway. They hold out on things that the rest of the world wants and slap everyone in the face with things they think are to their benefit. It’s a trash company that needs new leadership.

I am having the same issue and have opened a case with Apple regarding this matter as it drives me insane. For me, if I zoom out too far or pull down on the image, the entire top half of the screen blurs. There is no option to toggle it on or off, as you would imagine doing so with the depth effect.

What’s even more annoying about this is that it is seemingly super easy to avoid if when we choose the photo, it simply WOULDN’T ZOOM IN by itself because then we wouldn’t be trying to zoom out and thus triggering this annoying blur effect 🙄

Figured out how to fix it on my IPhone 11. Go to settings, then Wallpaper, then do New Wallpaper…it lets you pick a photo for the wallpaper…then you can click over on the Home Screen and change it if you want. But at the very bottom right hand corner you should see a raindrop looking image that says “blur”. If you click that it removes the blur from the image.

The issue was introduced with IOS 17.0.1 the blur they are talking about is not the blur seen on the Home Screen which you can turn on or off. When setting up the Lock Screen picture which seems to have two problems. One is the ability to use Color Backdrop on all new pics I try to use but seems to have stopped working and the second is as you zoom out the top 1/3 of the picture gets artificially blurred. There is no way to turn it off, since I am in IT and deal with iPhone on a daily basis, I am going to say it's a bug that was introduce and not much to be done but not upgrade or wait for the fix.

That is not what we're talking about. That is an iOS 16 feature to blur the entire background. We are referring to pinching to zoom out on a photo you set as a wallpaper and only the top of the phone blurs. The entire bottom half stays as is.

That fix worked before- but with the new update no.

When you zoom out for a photo to fit as a wallpaper it automatically is blurred on the top half. Even if the blur button on the right is unchecked.

i think this is a design flaw many won’t like.

It was introduced with iOS 17 for me, the first update gave me the bug. It's supposed to be a feature that blends the wallpaper to the top of the screen, instead it cuts off half of my photos for absolutely no reason. I have opened a case with Apple on the matter as well. But more people need to do the same to make them aware of it.

amazingrobie wrote:

Dear Apple, please stop breaking things to fix them later and call them a feature. No one ever types “ducks” and the blur you added thinking it would look good, looks like a garbage. I can’t express how much I dislike apple and its garbage tactics to manipulate the users experience into being subpar. You would think they would learn after a period of a time that certain things are not good to be done, but still, Apple does it anyway. They hold out on things that the rest of the world wants and slap everyone in the face with things they think are to their benefit. It’s a trash company that needs new leadership.

You haven't written Apple here. This is a user to user only forum. Just users like you are here. And Apple doesn't read these posts.

If you want to share your thoughts with Apple, use this link --> Feedback - iPhone - Apple

I have the same issue. Top 25% of a photo is has a white gradient. Ruins the photo and for what?

I'm not sure how this could help with readability as now the text on the top is white on white.

Interesting to note that previously saved wallpapers are not affected by this "feature".

I doubt Apple will do anything about it no matter how much we complain. I shared a screenshot to show what the issue is that we are experiencing since some people don't seem to understand what we are talking about and I received an email last night that Apple removed it because it didn't pertain to the topic at hand or some ridiculous non-sense. The screenshot was nothing offensive, it was simply a pic of my Dog that I had made a wallpaper to show how the top half of the screen is completely blurred out after cropping.