App Icon
Every app needs a beautiful and memorable icon that attracts attention in the App Store and stands out on the Home screen. Your icon is the first opportunity to communicate, at a glance, your app’s purpose. It also appears throughout the system, such as in Settings and search results.
Jun 28, 2020 So much has changed. So much is the same. Image: Cult of Mac. As you can see, Big Sur’s app icons are much more simplistic. However, some still feature nice little touches that prove Apple hasn. Jul 12, 2015 Open Application of Choice. Click on Application and hold down Mouse or trackpad button down; Drag Application to Dock. (While button is down move to desired position, making sure to drag all the way down so that the icons on each side separate to make room. Once the adjoining icons have moved release button.
Embrace simplicity. Find a single element that captures the essence of your app and express that element in a simple, unique shape. Add details cautiously. If an icon’s content or shape is overly complex, the details can be hard to discern, especially at smaller sizes.
Provide a single focus point. Design an icon with a single, centered point that immediately captures attention and clearly identifies your app.
Design a recognizable icon. People shouldn’t have to analyze the icon to figure out what it represents. For example, the Mail app icon uses an envelope, which is universally associated with mail. Take time to design a beautiful and engaging abstract icon that artistically represents your app’s purpose.
Keep the background simple and avoid transparency. Make sure your icon is opaque, and don’t clutter the background. Give it a simple background so it doesn’t overpower other app icons nearby. You don’t need to fill the entire icon with content.
Use words only when they’re essential or part of a logo. An app’s name appears below its icon on the Home screen. Don’t include nonessential words that repeat the name or tell people what to do with your app, like 'Watch' or 'Play.' If your design includes any text, emphasize words that relate to the actual content your app offers.
Don’t include photos, screenshots, or interface elements. Photographic details can be very hard to see at small sizes. Screenshots are too complex for an app icon and don’t generally help communicate your app’s purpose. Interface elements in an icon are misleading and confusing.
Don’t use replicas of Apple hardware products. Apple products are copyrighted and can’t be reproduced in your icons or images. In general, avoid displaying replicas of devices, because hardware designs tend to change frequently and can make your icon look dated.
Don’t place your app icon throughout the interface. It can be confusing to see an icon used for different purposes throughout an app. Instead, consider incorporating your icon’s color scheme. See Color.
Test your icon against different wallpapers. You can’t predict which wallpaper people will choose for their Home screen, so don’t just test your app against a light or dark color. See how it looks over different photos. Try it on an actual device with a dynamic background that changes perspective as the device moves.
Keep icon corners square. The system applies a mask that rounds icon corners automatically.
App Icon Attributes
All app icons should adhere to the following specifications.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | PNG |
| Color space | Display P3 (wide-gamut color), sRGB (color), or Gray Gamma 2.2 (grayscale). See Color Management. |
| Layers | Flattened with no transparency |
| Resolution | Varies. See Image Size and Resolution. |
| Shape | Square with no rounded corners |
App Icon Sizes
Every app must supply small icons for use on the Home screen and throughout the system once your app is installed, as well as a larger icon for display in the App Store.
| Device or context | Icon size |
|---|---|
| iPhone | 180px × 180px (60pt × 60pt @3x) |
| 120px × 120px (60pt × 60pt @2x) | |
| iPad Pro | 167px × 167px (83.5pt × 83.5pt @2x) |
| iPad, iPad mini | 152px × 152px (76pt × 76pt @2x) |
| App Store | 1024px × 1024px (1024pt × 1024pt @1x) |
Provide different sized icons for different devices. Make sure that your app icon looks great on all the devices you support.
Mimic your small icon with your App Store icon. Although the App Store icon is used differently than the small one, it’s still your app icon. It should generally match the smaller version in appearance, although it can be subtly richer and more detailed since there are no visual effects applied to it.
Spotlight, Settings, and Notification Icons
Every app should also provide a small icon that iOS can display when the app name matches a term in a Spotlight search. Additionally, apps with settings should provide a small icon to display in the built-in Settings app, and apps that support notifications should provide a small icon to display in notifications. All icons should clearly identify your app—ideally, they should match your app icon. If you don’t provide these icons, iOS might shrink your main app icon for display in these locations.
| Device | Spotlight icon size |
|---|---|
| iPhone | 120px × 120px (40pt × 40pt @3x) |
| 80px × 80px (40pt × 40pt @2x) | |
| iPad Pro, iPad, iPad mini | 80px × 80px (40pt × 40pt @2x) |
| Device | Settings icon size |
|---|---|
| iPhone | 87px × 87px (29pt × 29pt @3x) |
| 58px × 58px (29pt × 29pt @2x) | |
| iPad Pro, iPad, iPad mini | 58px × 58px (29pt × 29pt @2x) |
| Device | Notification icon size |
|---|---|
| iPhone | 60px × 60px (20pt × 20pt @3x) |
| 40px × 40px (20pt × 20pt @2x) | |
| iPad Pro, iPad, iPad mini | 40px × 40px (20pt × 20pt @2x) |
Don’t add an overlay or border to your Settings icon. iOS automatically adds a 1-pixel stroke to all icons so that they look good on the white background of Settings.
TIP If your app creates custom documents, you don't need to design document icons because iOS uses your app icon to create document icons automatically.
User-Selectable App Icons
For some apps, customization is a feature that evokes a personal connection and enhances the user experience. If it provides value in your app, you can let people select an alternate app icon from a set of predefined icons that are embedded within your app. For example, a sports app might offer icons for different teams or an app with light and dark modes might offer corresponding light and dark icons. Note that your app icon can only be changed at the user’s request and the system always provides the user with confirmation of such a change.
Provide visually consistent alternate icons in all necessary sizes. Like your primary app icon, each alternate app icon is delivered as a collection of related images that vary in size. When the user chooses an alternate icon, the appropriate sizes of that icon replace your primary app icon on the Home screen, in Spotlight, and elsewhere in the system. To ensure that alternate icons appear consistently throughout the system—the user shouldn't see one version of your icon on the Home screen and a completely different version in Settings, for example—provide them in the same sizes you provide for your primary app icon (with the exception of the App Store icon). See App Icon Sizes.
For developer guidance, see the setAlternateIconName method of UIApplication.
NOTE Alternate app icons are subject to app review and must adhere to the App Store Review Guidelines.
After a few hours of work, a Finder window in icon mode can look something like a teenager’s room: stuff strewn all over the place, as demonstrated with the Applications folder in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Will someone please clean up this mess?
To restore order to your Desktop, click in any open area of the active window and then choose View –> Clean Up. This command leaves the icons in approximately the same position but snaps them to an invisible grid so that they’re aligned, as shown in Figure 2.
Figure 2: Tidying up is no problem with the Clean Up menu command.
After things are in alignment, work with the icon view options. (Naturally, you’ll want the active Finder window in icon view first, so choose View –> As Icons or press COMMAND+1.) From the Finder menu, choose View –> Show View Options — or press that swingin’ COMMAND+J shortcut — to display the View Options dialog box that you see in Figure 3. (Remember that these options are the ones available for icon view.)
Figure 3: The settings available for icon view.
Note these first two radio buttons, which also appear in the list View Options dialog box:
- This Window Only: Select the This Window Only radio button to apply the changes that you make only to the Finder window that opens when you open the selected item — in other words, the item that appears in the window’s title bar.
- For example, any changes made to the settings in Figure 3 will affect only the Applications folder because it was the active Finder window when you pressed COMMAND+ J. (You may have noticed that the window name also appears as the title of the View Options dialog box.)
- All Windows: Select the All Windows radio button to apply the changes that you make to all Finder windows that you view in your current mode.
Of course, Mac OS X remembers the changes that you make within the View Options dialog box, no matter which view mode you’re configuring. You can also make other changes from this dialog box, including
- Resizing your Desktop icons: Click and drag the Icon Size slider to shrink or expand the icons on your Desktop. The icon size is displayed in pixels above the slider.
- Resizing icon label text: Click the up and down arrows to the right of the Text Size drop-down box to choose the font size (in points) for icon labels.
- Moving icon label text: Select either the Bottom (default) or the Right radio button to choose between displaying the text under your Desktop icons or to the right of the icons.
- Snap to Grid: Enable this check box to automatically align icons to a grid within the window, just as if you had used the Clean Up menu command.
- Show Item Info: With this check box enabled, Mac OS X displays the number of items within each folder in the window.
Free Mac Icons For Computer
- Show Icon Preview: If you enable this check box, the Finder displays icons for image files using a miniature of the actual picture. (A cool feature for those with digital cameras — however, showing a preview does take extra processing time because Mac OS X has to load each image file and shrink it down to create the icon.)
- Keep Arranged By: To sort the display of icons in a window, enable this check box and choose one of the following criteria from its drop-down list: by name, date modified, date created, size, or item type.
- Choosing a background: To select a background for the window, select one of three radio buttons here:
Icons Application Mac
• White: This is the default.
Macos App Icon
• Color: Click a color choice from the color block that appears if you make this selection.
• Picture: Select this radio button and then click the Select button to display a standard Open dialog box. Navigate to the location where the desired image is stored, click it once to select it, and then click Open.
After all your changes are made and you’re ready to return to work, click the dialog box’s Close button to save your settings.