Question 1

What size should an app icon be?

Accepted Answer

1024×1024 for iOS: one square image, and the system scales it for the home screen, Settings and notifications. Android's launcher icon is an adaptive icon on a 108×108 canvas, whose inner 66 is never clipped by a launcher's mask, and a Google Play listing takes a 512×512 icon. There is one composition here — the logo placed inside that safe area — and every size is drawn from it.

Question 2

Do I still need the long ladder of iOS sizes?

Accepted Answer

No. Current Xcode generates every variation from a single 1024×1024 image in the asset catalog, so the per-size PNG ladder older guides list is what tools exported when each size had to be a file of its own. A set that still carries it is not wrong; it carries files nothing asks for.

Question 3

What do I get for the desktop?

Accepted Answer

A container each system reads rather than a ladder of PNGs. macOS takes AppIcon.icns, one file holding 16 to 1024 px for a build that is not an Xcode project, with the Icon Composer document beside it; Windows takes icon.ico with six frames — 16, 24, 32, 48, 64 and 256 — which is what its taskbar and File Explorer read and the reason one file covers every place Windows draws an icon; Linux takes one PNG per size, 32 to 512, laid out as the size-named directories a desktop icon theme looks in. Each folder carries its own README saying which of its files a project wants.

Question 4

Why does my icon come out cut into a circle on Android?

Accepted Answer

Because the launcher draws the shape, not your file. Android shows a launcher icon through a mask the device owns — a circle, a squircle, a rounded square — and that mask can reach the corners of a logo that fills its square. Android's published safe zone is the inner 66 of the 108 canvas, and the margin this page computes is the circle inside it, because a square logo's corners are what meet the mask first: for a square logo that is about 29% on each side, which is the number the page opens on. A wide or flat logo needs less, so the tool computes the margin from the logo you gave it rather than printing one number for every file. Set it lower and the page says what the crop can cost.

Question 5

Can the icon be transparent?

Accepted Answer

It can be either, and the Background field is the choice. Cleared, nothing is drawn behind the logo: what arrived transparent stays transparent, and Android composites it onto the wallpaper the user chose. Set, that colour is the ground in every file. For iOS you will read that App Store Connect rejects an alpha channel, and Apple's own guidance does not say that — its dark variant is asked to have a transparent background — so nothing here forces a ground on you; a logo that carries one cannot go wrong on either platform.

Question 6

Where is Android's adaptive icon?

Accepted Answer

In the set. The adaptive format is two layers at 108×108 — a foreground and a background — plus the mipmap-anydpi-v26 XML that points at them, and all three are here: the XML, a colour resource holding the ground you set, and the foreground PNGs on the 108 dp canvas with the logo already inside the safe zone. What is not there is the monochrome layer, and nothing here flattens your logo to one ink to produce it — from Android 16 QPR 2 the system themes an icon that provides no layer of its own. Clear the Background field and there is no ground to put in the background layer, so the XML is left out; the foreground PNGs are still there to use by hand.

Question 7

Do I need dark, tinted or themed variants?

Accepted Answer

Those are second artworks rather than larger files. An iOS app icon now has light, dark and tinted appearances, and from Android 13 a themed launcher tints an icon through a monochrome layer. Producing either means deciding how your logo looks flattened to one ink — a redrawing rather than a resize, and a logo that relies on colour arrives as a solid blob — so the default appearance is the one composed here. Google's own guidance adds that from Android 16 QPR 2 the system themes icons that do not provide a layer, so the logo is not locked out of a themed home screen.

Question 8

Do I need to draw the rounded corners, or a shadow?

Accepted Answer

No, and you should not. iOS applies its own mask, a superellipse rather than the corner radius a design tool draws, so corners baked into the artwork arrive doubled. Google Play rounds and shadows the listing icon for you, which is why the 512 there is a plain square. Draw the logo; the platform draws the shape.

Question 9

Why is my 1024 icon soft?

Accepted Answer

Because the logo you gave it was smaller than the slot. The 1024 is the one size that is enlarged rather than reduced when the source is under 1024 px, and the page says so under the scene when that happens. The files are still correct; that one has less detail than the pixels it is written into. Draw the logo at 1024 or larger and it stays sharp.

Question 10

Is my logo uploaded anywhere?

Accepted Answer

No. The file is decoded, composed and encoded in your browser, and nothing leaves your device. There is no account because there is nothing to bill.

App icon generator

Where it will live

What you get

How it works

Drop in your logo

Look at it where it lands

What an app icon is, and where it is read

One composition, written into every container

The safe band is the platform's, and the strictest one is what this fits

Common questions