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Understanding Tile Background Effects

Square Home

currently supports a total of five tile background effects. Go to Home options > Tile sizes and styles > Background effect and select one of the following effects.


1. Disabled

This is the default value when you first install the launcher. You can disable the wallpaper or use System wallpaper or App wallpaper to use this effect. If you disable the wallpaper, it uses a black background color, which you can change in Home options > Behavior and UI > Background color. It looks a bit boring at first, but you can use different tile colors and rounded corners to create a nice screen like this.

Background effect disabled

When using a wallpaper, you can also customize the tile style color to be translucent so that you can see the wallpaper behind the tiles, as shown in the following picture.

Applying translucent tile styles on a wallpaper

If you want to apply adaptive tile colors here, please refer to the following post.

Adaptive Tile Colors to the Wallpaper


2. Blurred

Selecting this effect will ignore the applied tile style and apply a blurred effect to the tile background, as shown in the figure.

Blurred background effect

You can also force the tile style to be applied by long pressing on the tile to select the style. To use this effect, you must apply the "App wallpaper" from Home options > Behavior and UI > Wallpaper, because due to Android security policy, the app can no longer access the system wallpaper.


3. Transparent

This effect is available for both System wallpaper and App wallpaper. When you select this effect, the background of the tile will be transparent to show the wallpaper, as shown in the figure.

Transparent background effect

The area without tiles is filled with black, which can be changed in Home options > Behavior and UI > Background color.


4. Grayscale

This effect applies a combination of a slightly blurred effect and a completely desaturated color effect to the tile background. Like the "Blurred" effect, this effect also requires the use of the App wallpaper.

Grayscale background effect

5. Refraction

This effect mimics the refraction of light through glass. After applying this effect, you can tilt your device or scroll through the home screen to make the effect more dramatic. For the same reason, you must use an app wallpaper to apply this effect.

Refraction background effect


Make your home screen more beautiful with a variety of background effects!



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