MD Blank - Photo Clock Widget Reviews

I love MDBlank, from the invisible widget name to the positioning and alignment of the widgets themselves. MDBlank works seamlessly when editing my widgets. I only have one problem. Customization is really what MDBlank is all about. Personally, I’m using focus modes to change the aesthetic of my phone buy changing the wallpaper. Unfortunately, when I do this, the widgets will stay on the previous image. What would make MDBlank great would be if there was a way to have multiple widgets with multiple images. What I mean by this is to have one image selected for some widgets, then have another image selected for other widgets, and have both widgets be working on the same home screen (really just at the same time). By implementing this feature, MDBlank would be perfect for customization and multiple wallpapers. I hope the developers see this comment and take the opportunity to better MDBlank.

Go through the tutorial, then add the screen caps of your background. Exit MDBlank and get the jiggle going for all the apps. Hit the plus sign in top left corner. The widget you made is there. Pick an option. Long hold still app, click edit widget to tell it it’s proper location to match.

Wish MDBlank supported multiple home pictures, & emojis etc… also would be cool to allow pictures in general letting us decide what showed in the space. Smallest size fits four apps. Would be great if sizing was more dynamic.

All that said, appreciate MDBlank . Wish there was more customization out there that worked with 3rd party apps without relying on themes.

MDBlank works perfectly and makes your home screens look great. However - I upgraded to the iPhone 14 Pro and now the photo doesn’t align with the Home Screen. I tried screen screen shooting the Home Screen to update the light and dark photos in MDBlank setting, but it says they are not the right size. Hope this gets fixed!! Still love MDBlank 🤍

MDBlank does exactly what it says, and is the easiest and cleanest way to add an extra image to your home screen.

Suggestion: could you add either a Shortcuts integration or x-callback-url/URL Scheme so that we can update the background images programmatically? That’s the last step I’m missing in being able to automate wallpaper changes 100%.

Either way, great app, thanks so much for making it!

A great app for people who want a certain aesthetic look to their layout design; that being said, there are a few problems that need to be addressed by the devs. On click, the “blank” widget leading to MDBlank itself is quite redundant. I can’t get MDBlank itself to accept screenshots on my iPad. Has anyone else figured this out? Lastly, the widgets glitch often. All 3 sizes. They’ll revert back to default positioning, or if in a stack-cause other widgets to go blank. Hopefully they work these kinks out soon.

I love the idea of the transparent background and it works almost perfectly from when I tested but the fact that you can have no name at the bottom of a widget can open up a door a lot more possibilities. There should be an option to make regular widgets like the ones in widgetsmith and still have no name under them. Then this will be the all in one perfect app, but still great app and definitely recommend!

this is worked great on my iPhone even with the display zoom on. I am a little bummed out that they don’t have an app for the iPad. If they had one for the iPad I would love to see one that would also work with larger icon option from the settings. I have a widget maker right now but it doesn’t work in both orientations, and it doesn’t work with larger icons.

Does exactly what it needs to do. The only improvement I can think of is if it’d allow us to save multiple configurations of backgrounds for the clear effect - since iOS 16 lets us have multiple wallpapers it does get slightly tedious having to save a bunch of screenshots to swap out every time to change a wallpaper from the lock screen

Works perfectly! I was a little confused on how to adjust what part of the picture I wanted but I was able to figure it out pretty quickly (just tap the widget when it’s in wiggle mode and you can adjust). MDBlank is life changing!! I can actually see my background now!!

Super cool concept! Works pretty well. It does need an update or something however. On my iPhone 13 Pro Max running iOS 15.6 the widgets are ever so slightly off and so it ruins the illusion a bit. If you have a relatively busy background then it’s difficult to notice, but it is still quite apparent that there are widgets present because the images don’t line up well enough.

MDBlank I had been using before worked on my old phone, but it wasn’t aligning properly on my new one. So I tried this one out, my expectations low, BUT IT’S SO SO MUCH BETTER THAN THE OTHER APP!! It even has a completely blank name, so it’s 100% invisible compared to other widgets that have the annoying app name breaking the effect!

I can’t even lie, I was so skeptical. But it is the best app for clear widgets. The instructions or so straightforward and it lined up perfectly even w background designs. I have a collage as my background and it fit so perfectly you can’t even tell I have a widget there! I should have trusted from the beginning 😂

Love MDBlank but would definitely love to see more size options, being able to choose the dimensions like 1x1 or 1x2 etc. but otherwise great app for what it is! You can obviously see it when you’re swiping the screen but It’s no deal breaker!

The ability to change the wallpaper using shortcuts would be incredible. Right now I can only set a light and dark mode photo, but if I was able to update the background of the widget using shortcuts that would be amazing

This is so easy to use once you do it once! It's the small change that makes your whole phone screen look that much cleaner! I definitely reccomend trying it. It was exactly what I needed.

I’ve been using these for months. I LOVE them. However I would love the feature to be able to add multiple different home screens to MDBlank , as my home screen changes with different focus modes. As soon as that feature is added this would be a 5 star app.

The tutorial was easy for me to follow and it works as intended, not sure why people are having problems with it. (Also, making MDBlank display name blank so the widgets don’t have text beneath them is absolutely genius)

For the price, it probably isn’t worth it. It definitely makes it a lot quicker to make icons but with the speed, quality is lost. It’s much better quality to have a basic editing app and do it yourself. Custom icons will lose quality if you put it into MDBlank . Other than that, if you don’t care too much about quality, it won’t be very noticeable.

What a blessing. No advertisements, no crappy subscription scam. It does one thing and it does it well. Follow the instructions to grab a screenshot, long press widget to select position (which determines the background crop).

I’ve been using MDBlank for a while now and is definitely the best of its kind, in my opinion.

However, it will not allow me to update the background on my iPhone 14 Pro on iOS 16. I keep getting a warning that the screenshot size is not the right size.

MDBlank is allowed to be downloaded on iPads, and it will run, and it’s widget will show up on screen, however do to a image size check in the program it locks out iPad users from setting their background image and enjoying MDBlank . It “should” be a pretty simple fix to check what device is being used and then img size check accordingly. Or just disallow iPad compatibility to avoid confusion.
Either way, Developer please fix, thank you. Works fine on iPhone.

I love MDBlank, I love that I can put it at the top of my screen so that I can easily reach apps. Until the last update, I was able to edit the widget and add text, really handy as a quick note to myself and have it highly visible, instead of having to use yet another notepad or calendar app. I just went to make a quick note, and the option is gone. It was a 5 star app before removing that, now it’s 3.

Edit : I see now, you have to go into MDBlank , create another widget with the text you want, and edit the widget that’s already there to add the text widget. That is so much more complicated than just long-pressing the widget and adding text. 3 stars still.

There’s a bit of a learning curve when first using MDBlank but once you understand the settings MDBlank is well designed & incredibly useful—imagine being able to customize your homescreen & icon positioning the way YOU want without iOS’s frustrating auto-arrange constantly messing everything up. Quite frankly it’s embarrassing that in 2022 & iOS 16 that Apple hasn’t addressed these issues—I shouldn’t need an app to adjust such fundamental settings.

Anyway, *THANK YOU* to the dev for all your efforts in creating/maintaining MDBlank!

I’ve been using this for about a year or so now, and I mostly love it. With the new ios16 update that lets you shift your wallpapers and home screens with different focus modes, I really wish MDBlank would let you change your widgets as well! If you want to switch things up, right now your choices are only light mode and dark mode. If that’s all you want, it’s a great app that works well, but I would love some more customization options!!

I had an IPhone 13 Pro Max and MDBlank worked great, unfortunately when I switched for the 14 Pro Max it is not working. It keeps saying to upload a screenshot of the Home Screen yet that is legitimately the image I’m uploading. Nonetheless, I’ll give MDBlank a 5 star rating for working well before and in hope with the review they find the issue and resolve it to reuse it later on.

I just updated to iOS 16 and it seems Apple added a dark shadow behind widgets. Now it doesn’t look as seamless as before. Idk if this is something that can even be fixed by the developer for MDBlank, so I’ll leave my 5⭐️ rating, because it's not their fault.

Original Review:
Simple and functional 👍
It works, it’s easy to set up, and it’s completely free! Can’t ask for more!

UPDATE: since the issue arose, it has since been fixed and works great!!

MDBlank used to work fantastically!! Noticed today it was just a dark grey widget. Deleted widget off homepage, tried to add it again, did not show up as widget option. Deleted app, turned off phone, all that, still doesn’t work. Hopefully they update soon, I loved MDBlank.

App worked well for a month or so. After the most recent update all of the blank widgets turned white, and attempting to open MDBlank would bring you to a white screen, then it would crash. I deleted and reinstalled but it still has the same issue. It needs to be fixed soon.

It’s really easy but it takes time to figure out how to use it and it’s pretty cheap for something that’s nice in my opinion it’s a good app you can make stuff invisible it’s just the one thing that I don’t like is when you click it it goes on it so people figure out how you did it.

In case you have that special picture you don’t want covered up by apps.
Takes some getting used to; seeing the floating part of an image when switching home pages, or accidentally tapping the widget bringing up MDBlank .
Cool app. Wish Apple would just let us move our apps around freely.

It’s obvious the developers care about MDBlank. After a recent bug fix, another app-breaking issue came up. That problem was fixed very quickly, in a matter of a few days.

I’m writing this review to offset my complaint review. MDBlank works as intended now and is very useful.

I love MDBlank and it has worked great since I’ve had it. But, this morning it no longer works. I can no longer add the apps widget to my Home Screen. It does not show as an option when editing the Home Screen. Could be an Apple “fix” but I’m not sure. Help!!

Being able to place my apps where I don’t have to reach my fingers as far, but still keeping the above space blank is very nice. When sliding between home screens, however, the widget does not move with the background, giving the appearance that the photo is splitting like some pptx slide animation! Still worth it for the practical reasons, but I would enjoy it much more if this cosmetic issue were resolved, if that’s possible with how the OS works \_o_/

I have been using MDBlank for awhile, and it’s a really good app. But today when I was doing a software update, all my widgets were deleted when it was finished. So then I spent time recreating most of the widgets just to find that they wouldn’t work. I had all the widgets blank on my Home Screen, but it wouldn’t let me choose the widgets and I had to leave it blank. If anyone knows how to fix this I would really appreciate it.

I would get premium for the iBoard, but I wish you could customize at least the font and switch the weather forecast from 24 to AM/PM. It would be even better if you change the layout or the order of the segments on each page. And more widgets, even if they’re small features like a widget solely for opening a URL with an icon, title, etc. Otherwise good app.

I sent an email last month and got NO RESPONSE. MDBlank is way to buggy to even use; I bought the premium version and it’s unusable. When I set my widgets and have to restart or update my phone all my widgets disappear on screen and in app. It started working for a little bit. Then a few weeks later (presently) the widgets don’t even show up, it just shows a white squares. I tried adding new stuff widgets, changing wallpapers, and nothing … for reference I am not on iOS 17 yet so im not sure if the update broke MDBlank , but I shouldn’t have to upgrade just to use an app that was already buggy from the start smh

MDBlank is great and works very well. And the widgets are very customizable. My only disappointment was that there wasn’t a lot of glassy/transparent “iBoard” widgets after paying $2.99, which was the main reason I paid for MDBlank. The only glassy/transparent “iBoard” widgets are weather, calendar, and device. MDBlank has other widgets like photos, time, and text but they don’t have the same glassy/transparent theme.

I love MDBlank! It has so much stuff to decorate my home screen, and I like how it doesn't leave those annoying words at the bottom at the widget.

One thing that would make MDBlank better though if I could chose my own font for the text when picking the calendar widget. With the limited options I have right now for the calendar fonts, it's hard to chose one that would go good for my wallpaper.

It does everything I need it to do without a hitch! With the new features I've been able to relegate all my phone organization/customization to just MDBlank, which I love (no need for widgetsmith anymore). The only flaw I can really think of is that sometimes the widgets take a little while to load after rebooting the phone/charging it from dead, but it's honestly not much of a bother. In terms of features I'd like to see, I love the iboard widget and it would be really nice if you could add a tab for screen time data in it! Also maybe some lock screen widget stuff and potentially the ability to make transparent app icons/shortcuts in addition to widgets? Regardless this is a great app and I would recommend it to anyone!

I’ve used MDBlank for awhile now and I have loved the new styles of widgets you can add to your home screen. My favorites being the date and the weather widgets. My only request would be to add more text fonts, preferably something more minimal. I like the “Ex: It’s Tuesday, February 6th, 2024” widget however I wish there was more versatility with the font of choice and text size within the widget itself. Otherwise, awesome!!

MDBlank is great and easy to use. Everything is quick and easy which is great for an app like this. My only problem is that sometimes the widgets remove and it says “tap to set up wallpaper.” usually I think it’s just because it’s an update which it is but this time I can’t update MDBlank and it just stays like that. How do I fix this bug?

It works perfectly fine but there is only 3 analog clocks to choose from and they are all ugly. There isn’t even a clock with a circular border, you know like a clock 🕝. I’m disappointed, it seemed like there was a lot of customizability looking through the gallery but really it’s a lot of the same assets with different color schemes. There’s plenty of fonts for the text widgets, that’s nice. But yeah 3 analog clocks just called “watch” in MDBlank , (on that note if they’re supposed to be “watches” then there’s just no clocks at all?) I don’t know, also it’s the same 4 themes for every widget in every category! If 2 of them are ugly that’s half of the whole catalogue, and they are! At least 2 are ugly and the other 2 are nearly identical except one is rounded at the edges and the other one is squared. I bought pro but I was deciding between this one and another blank widget app now I wish I had gone with the other one. I checked and it has so much more options now! I would not recommend MDBlank to anyone, a standard analog clock is like the bare minimum of widgets and it doesn’t even have that. I hope more is added soon because that’s just not cool you guys.

I downloaded MDBlank in hopes to clean my home screen of the text clutter that you get from “normal” widgets. Shortcuts allow you to remove text from apps, but not widgets. I’m glad the devs of MDBlank have found a work around while implementing innovative solutions to give the user limitless creative control. The free version is very fair in what functionality you’re provided to start; and the price for lifetime access for pro is quite good too.

The user interface takes some getting used to at first. I had to tamper with it for awhile, but once you get a hang of it it’s very user friendly. On screen tutorials would be beneficial for some functions.

Something I would recommend that I would like to see is the option to change the time format from 24 hours to 12 hours in the clock and Iboard widgets. Otherwise, phenomenal app!