How can an iOS 7 App make itself transparent to see a user's home screen image?

I've seen some apps for example (Vesper, or iPad's reminders app) make use of a user's home screen background image. How is that possible?

It must be some sort of clever trick to make a transparent View or Window or (Gulp!) Private API?

Anyone hazard a guess? enter image description hereenter image description here


I haven't tried it myself, but I hear that the private method [[UIApplication sharedApplication] _setApplicationIsOpaque: NO] may do what you're after.