Apple desktop icons size
Beautiful app icons are an important part of the user experience on all Apple platforms. A unique, memorable icon evokes your app and can help people recognize it at a glance on the desktop, in Finder, and in the Dock. Polished, expressive icons can also hint at an app’s personality and even its overall level of quality.
In macOS 11, app icons share a common set of visual attributes, including the rounded-rectangle shape, front-facing perspective, level position, and uniform drop shadow. Rooted in the macOS 11 design language, these attributes showcase the lifelike rendering style people expect in macOS while presenting a harmonious user experience. To download templates that specify the correct shape and drop shadow, see Apple Design Resources.
IMPORTANT When you update your app for macOS 11, use your new app icon design to replace the icon you designed for earlier versions. You can’t include two different app icons for one app, and the macOS 11 app icon style looks fine on a Mac running Catalina or earlier.
Design a beautiful icon that clearly represents your app. Combine an engaging design with an artistic interpretation of your app’s purpose that people can instantly understand.
Embrace simplicity. Find a concept or element that captures the essence of your app and express it in a simple, unique way, adding details only when doing so enhances meaning. Too many details can be hard to discern and can make the icon appear muddy, especially at smaller sizes.
Establish a single focus point. A single, centered point of interest captures the user’s attention and helps them recognize your app at a glance. Presenting multiple focus points can obscure the icon’s message.
To give people a familiar and consistent experience, prefer a design that works well across multiple platforms. If your app runs on other platforms, use a similar image for all app icons while rendering them in the style that’s appropriate for each platform. For example, in iOS and watchOS, the Mail app icon depicts the white envelope in a streamlined, graphical style; in macOS 11, the envelope includes depth and detail that communicate a realistic weight and texture.
Consider depicting a familiar tool to communicate what people use your app to do. To give context to your app’s purpose, you can use the icon background to portray the tool’s environment or the items it affects. For example, the TextEdit icon pairs a mechanical pencil with a sheet of lined paper to suggest a utilitarian writing experience. After you create a detailed, realistic image of a tool, it often works well to let it float just above the background and extend slightly past the icon boundaries. If you do this, make sure the tool remains visually unified with the background and doesn’t overwhelm the rounded-rectangle shape.
Make real objects look real. If you depict real objects in your app icon, make them look like they’re made of physical materials and have actual mass. Replicate the characteristics of substances like fabric, glass, paper, and metal to convey an object’s weight and feel. For example, the Xcode app icon features a hammer that looks like it has a steel head and polymer grip.
If text is essential for communicating your app’s purpose, consider creating a graphic abstraction of it. Actual text in an icon can be difficult to read and doesn’t support accessibility or localization. To give the impression of text without implying that people should zoom in to read it, you can create a graphic texture that suggests it.
To depict photos or parts of your app’s UI, create idealized images that emphasize the features you want people to notice. Photos are often full of details that obscure the main content when viewed at small sizes. If you want to use a photo in your icon, pick one with strongly contrasting values that make the main subject stand out. Remove unimportant details that make primary lines and shapes fuzzy or indistinct. If your app has a UI that people recognize, avoid simply replicating standard UI elements or using a screenshot in your icon. Instead, consider designing a graphic that echoes the UI and expresses the personality of your app.
Don’t use replicas of Apple hardware products. Apple products are copyrighted and can’t be reproduced in your icons or images. Avoid displaying replicas of devices, because hardware designs tend to change frequently and can make your icon look dated.
Use the drop shadow in the icon-design template. The template includes the system-defined drop shadow that helps your app icon coordinate with other macOS 11 icons.
Consider using interior shadows and highlights to add definition and realism. For example, the Mail app icon uses both shadows and highlights to give the envelope authenticity and to suggest that the flap is slightly open. In icons that include a tool that floats above a background — such as TextEdit or Xcode — interior shadows can strengthen the perception of depth and make the tool look real. Shadows and highlights should suggest a light source that faces the icon, positioned just above center and tilted slightly downward.
Avoid defining contours that suggest a shape other than a rounded rectangle. In rare cases, you might want to fine-tune the basic app icon shape, but doing so risks creating an icon that looks like it doesn’t belong in macOS 11. If you must alter the shape, prefer subtle adjustments that continue to express a rounded rectangle silhouette.
Consider adding a slight glow just inside the edges of your icon. If your app icon includes a dark reflective surface, like glass or metal, add an inner glow to make the icon stand out and prevent it from appearing to dissolve into dark backgrounds.
Keep primary content within the icon grid bounding box; keep all content within the outer bounding box. If an icon’s primary content extends beyond the icon grid bounding box, it tends to look out of place. If you overlay a tool on your icon, it works well to align the tool’s top edge with the outer bounding box and its bottom edge with the inner bounding box, as shown below.
In addition to the bounding boxes and suggested tool placement, the icon design template provides a grid to help you position items within an icon. You can also use the icon grid to ensure that centered inner elements like circles use a size that’s consistent with other icons in the system.
App Icon Attributes
All app icons should use the following specifications.
| Attribute | Value |
|---|---|
| Format | PNG |
| Color space | sRGB (color) or Gray Gamma 2.2 (grayscale) |
| Layers | Flattened with transparency as appropriate |
| Resolution | @1x and @2x (see Image Size and Resolution) |
| Shape | Square with rounded corners |
Don’t provide app icons in ICNS or JPEG format. The ICNS format doesn’t support features like wide color gamut or deliver the performance and efficiency you get when you use asset catalogs. JPEG doesn’t support transparency through alpha channels, and its compression can blur or distort an icon’s images. For best results, add deinterlaced PNG files to the app icon fields of your Xcode project’s asset catalog.
App Icon Sizes
Your app icon is displayed in many places, including in Finder, the Dock, Launchpad, and the App Store. To ensure that your app icon looks great everywhere people see it, provide it in the following sizes:
- 512×512 pt (512×512 px @1x, 1024×1024 px @2x)
- 256×256 pt (256×256 px @1x, 512×512 px @2x)
- 128×128 pt (128×128 px @1x, 256×256 px @2x)
- 32×32 pt (32×32 px @1x, 64×64 px @2x)
- 16×16 pt (16×16 px @1x, 32×32 px @2x)
Maintain visual consistency in all icon sizes. As icon size decreases, fine details become muddy and hard to distinguish. At the smallest sizes, it’s important to remove unnecessary features and exaggerate primary features to help the content remain clear. As you simplify icons that are visually smaller, don’t let them appear drastically different from their larger counterparts. Strive to make subtle variations that ensure the icon remains visually consistent when displayed in different environments. For example, if people drag your icon between displays with different resolutions, the icon’s appearance shouldn’t suddenly change.
The 512×512 pt Safari app icon (on the left) uses a circle of tick marks to indicate degrees; the 16×16 pt version of the icon (on the right) doesn’t include this detail.
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Question: Q: Icon size on Desktop
I love the new large icons.
On my macbook pro I have discovered that you can increase the size of the icons on the desktop by using the multitouch trackpad. However how do you do this on the imac
If you use finder you can use the slider but this does not appear to translate to desktop icon size.
iMac,Macbook Pro, Mac OS X (10.5.6)
Posted on Sep 6, 2009 11:10 PM
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From the Apple Help System —
*Aligning, labeling, and resizing icons*
To modify icons:
To modify icons in a Finder window, open the window.
To modify icons on the desktop, click the background area of your screen.
Choose View > Show View Options and make your choices.
Each of the views—icon, list, column, or Cover Flow—has its own view options. The icons change as you make choices, so you can immediately see the effect of your changes.
“Snap to Grid” (available in the “Arrange by” pop-up menu in icon view) makes icons align in rows and columns when you move them around.
To apply your changes to every window you open, click “Use as Defaults.”
This option does not appear if you’re adjusting icons for the desktop.
Sep 6, 2009 11:37 PM
Thanks for your response.
Thats great but I want to change the size of the desktop icons. How do I do this?
You can do it by using trackpad gestures on the macbook pro (hence i have large icons on the macbook pro) .How do i do this for the imac ?
Sep 6, 2009 11:45 PM
From the Finder, in the Menu Bar, click View/Show View Options
Reset icon size at the top of that window.
Sep 6, 2009 11:48 PM
I do appreciate everyones responses.
If i click on the finder and go to the desktop page and use view/show view options I can resize the icons as they appear in the finder. However this does not change the size of the icons that show on the actual desktop.
Sep 6, 2009 11:55 PM
It certainly should. Works on mine. I know that doesn’t help you at the moment but at least I’m on the right track.
Try deleting this file. com.apple.Desktop.plist
/Users/YourName/Library/Preferences. Drag that file to the Trash, empty the Trash and restart your Mac.
Do the View/Show View Options and try to resize the Desktop icons
Message was edited by: Carolyn Samit
Sep 6, 2009 11:58 PM
Sep 7, 2009 2:39 AM
The only references I’ve seen from Apple about 512k icons refers to icons in a Finder Window that’s in Icon View (which I almost never use).
I believe that Apple still has a limit of 128k icons for the desktop. There was a terminal hack to change the size of the icons on the desktop for Leopard, but I’ve read that it doesn’t work for Snow Leopard.
Sep 7, 2009 9:59 AM
That means you are still in the Finder window and not in the Desktop. Hide all your apps and close all Finder windows to be sure you are actually in the desktop. Then go to View and scroll down to Show View Options. This feature in the Desktop has fewer options in the window than what a Finder window has, which makes it easy to tell you are in the Desktop.
Sep 7, 2009 10:10 AM
It sounds like you are getting to the dialog. What you are missing is clicking on the Desktop itself.
When you click on the Desktop itself, the dialog will change to show the settings for it. The icons are limited to 128×128 maximum, but you can also change the grid spacing.
Also note the keyboard shortcut for the settings dialog: Command-J
And you can use secondary-click (aka right-click) on the Desktop to get a menu, and the last item in that menu is *Show View Options*.
Sep 7, 2009 12:49 PM
Nov 5, 2009 11:50 AM
Question: Q: Icon size on Desktop More Less
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Apple desktop icons size
The coordinates system macOS uses to place content onscreen is based on measurements in points, which map to pixels in the display. A standard-resolution display has a 1:1 pixel density (or @1x), where one pixel is equal to one point. High-resolution displays have a higher pixel density and a scale factor of 2.0 (referred to as @2x). As a result, high-resolution displays demand images with more pixels.
For example, suppose you have a standard resolution @1x image that’s 100px × 100px. The @2x version of this image would be 200px × 200px.
Supply high-resolution images for all your app’s artwork. You accomplish this by multiplying the number of pixels in each image by the scale factor. Append a suffix of “@2x” to your @2x image names, and insert them into @2x fields in the asset catalog of your Xcode project.
Designing High-Resolution Artwork
Produce art at the largest size you need and scale it down for smaller sizes. It’s easiest to design a detailed image at a large size and reduce the level of detail, if necessary, at smaller sizes.
Use an 8px-by-8px grid. A grid keeps lines sharp and ensures that content is as crisp as possible at all sizes, requiring less retouching and sharpening. Snap the image boundaries to the grid to minimize half pixels and blurry details that can occur when scaling down. For templates and other resources, see Apple Design Resources.
Always preview high-resolution images at lower resolutions. If you’re not satisfied with how your high-resolution images look when scaled down, redraw and preview the art again.
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