Custom android app icon

How to make a custom icon for Android

Source: Ara Wagoner / Android Central

Icon packs have holes. Icon packs don’t always fit your wallpaper. And when you’re theming your phone, maybe what you need isn’t in an icon pack at all. That’s OK. We don’t need no stinkin’ icon packs, especially in 2020 when apps like Icon Pack Studio exist. We can edit together our own custom icons! It’s easy. All you need is some kind of photo editor — be it the latest Photoshop or free cloud-based editors like Pixlr E — and a little creativity.

Finding your image

Most third-party launchers like Nova Launcher let you set any image you want as an app icon. With that kind of freedom, it can be a bit daunting finding inspiration for your icons. While most custom icons are theme-driven — using color palettes or pictures based on a wallpaper — here are some more ideas for custom icons or where to pull them:

Source: Android Central

• Game elements: Inventory items in a lot of games, like these Dark Souls items, are easy to set as icons because most are designed to fit into a square and transparent PNG images of the items are easily found on fan sites and game wikis.
• Emoji: Emoji are already square images that are mobile friendly and can be decoded a million different ways. You can disguise apps by how they make you feel, what they remind you of, like a secret code only you can decipher.
• Music: If you want to show off your intense love of your favorite group or band, make their already-square album covers into custom icons. ABBA’s SOS for the dialer? Metallica for Chrome? Can You Feel The Love Tonight for Tindr?
• Logos: Sports teams, name brands, heck even a lot of movies and bands have their logos online in transparent PNG images, ready to be set as a custom icon. If you’re a sports fan, your team’s logo is the easiest app drawer icon in the theming world, and in most cases it won’t need any editing at all.
• Vector sites: Want an emblem for a globe, or a lilypad, or bell bottoms? Icon sites and vector repositories are treasure troves of icon fodder, and once you download them, you can gussy them up with textures and color palettes. Flaticon has a fantastic selection of both free and paid icons.

If the image you find is a transparent and square image, congratulations! You can apply it as-is. If it isn’t, there’s a few edits you may need to make.

Editing: How to turn an image into an icon

Let’s get one thing out of the way right away: you do not to pay for Photoshop just to make custom icons. You can absolutely use free photo editors, like Pixlr E and remove.bg to get the job done for free, and you can use them on your phone if you don’t have a laptop handy.

Here’s what can be wrong with an image and how to fix it:

Source: Android Central

If your source image doesn’t have a transparent background, you need to delete the background if you want to apply it on Android (or add a color palette background on iOS), you can use Photoshop, Pixlr E, or remove.bg to get rid of it and save it as a transparent PNG.

If your source image isn’t a square image, you need to pad out the image and make it a square. You can do this in Photoshop or Pixlr E using the Image > Canvas size option and then expanding the canvas out into a square.

Source: Android Central

If an image is too large — if it looks too jagged or busy — you can can resize it using Pixlr E, Photoshop, or even the built-in Gallery app in Chrome OS or Windows to resize the image to a smaller size. 500x50px is a good size for icons, as it allows them to look good even when screen zoom is turned up, but it’s not so big that details will look janky.

Icon Pack Studio: Build your own icons seamlessly

Source: Android Central

If you’re not interested in hunting down a new image for every single app on your home screen — to say nothing of all the apps in your app drawer — then let me share what I use for my home screen icons these days: Icon Pack Studio. This app doesn’t make standalone icons, it creates a custom icon mask that it can then apply to every single app in most third-party launchers, though it’s most seamless on Smart Launcher 5 since it’s made by the Smart Launcher team.

You can choose the background shape, how big and what kind of app icon is used, and then add stroke, textures, gradients, and other fun effects to the mask before exporting it (for other launchers) or directly applying it (on Smart Launcher 5). You can set colors by hex code, allowing for the icon to be perfectly matched to your wallpaper or widgets.

Make it your own

Icon Pack Studio

Pick your background, pick your textures, and bam, instant gapless icon pack! This could replace all your custom icon and icon pack needs.

Applying a custom icon

The method for applying a custom icon can vary a little depending on the launcher you use. Here are the processes for applying a custom icon on the most popular launchers, and how to apply a custom icon even if your launcher doesn’t support custom icons itself.

Nova Launcher

1. Long-press the shortcut you wish to change.
2. Tap Edit.

Tap the icon box to edit the icon.

Source: Android Central

Navigate to and select your custom icon.

Source: Android Central

Enjoy your new icon

Source: Android Central

Action Launcher

1. Long-press and hold the app shortcut you’d like to edit.
2. Drag the icon up to Edit.

Swipe up the menu to reveal the list of sources for your icon.

Source: Android Central

Return to the home screen to enjoy your new icon.

Source: Android Central

The only limits for custom icons are your own tastes and your imagination! What custom icons have you used in a theme? Got a great idea for some custom icons but don’t quite know how you could pull it off? Leave your ideas in the comments below!

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How to Create Android App Icons using Image Asset Studio

Creating an application interface that the user will like and will be unlikely to forget can be intimidating. But creating an attractive launcher icon for your app, that the user will first come across while looking at your app, anyway needs more brainstorming. For Android, you need to create these graphics that have to be compatible and supporting to all devices running Android, sizes varying from a smartphone to TV. The introduction of Android Image Asset Studio in Android Studio has made it easy. In this article, you will see how you can easily create your application icon in one go.

Image Asset Studio is a tool introduced in Android Studio 3. It can be used to generate app icons for all the screen densities in one go, using custom images, material design icons as well as text strings. Application icon in Android includes the following,

• Launcher Icon: represents your app and the first thing that user sees
• ActionBar Icon & Tab Icon: representing actions in the ActionBar and Tabs of the app
• Notification Icon: represents your app notification when a user is outside your app

Here is a list of icon/image sizes that you need to create for different screen densities, for each image that you use in your application. No matter if you are a good designer, creating each of these is tedious!

Image Asset Studio helps to create all these icons for all screen densities and stores them in respective density folders. It provides a preview of all the icons that will be created, in different shapes, with options to edit them. Let’s see how to create each one of them.

Run Image Asset Studio

1. In the Project Window, select the project hierarchy.
2. Right-click on the res folder and choose New -> Image Asset.

3. Create the icon for your app i.e.

• Launcher icon which may be Adaptive and Legacy Launcher Icon (if your app supports Android 8.0 or above) or just the Legacy Launcher Icon(for Android version less than or equal to 7.1)
• ActionBar Icons and Tab Icons
• notification icon as per your requirement.

4. You can select the following Asset Type. The icon appears on the right side, in the preview panel.

Custom Image

You can use custom images of PNG (recommended), JPG or GIF (avert) format and adjust it to create icons. Set the path of your custom image if you select this.

Clip Art

You can select the icons from the list of Google Material Design Icons provided in the dialog. Click on the clip art icon to get the dialog with icon set.

Text String

You can use the fonts installed on your computer to generate the icons out of the text strings. It will create these text-based icons in PNG format in respective drawable-density folders. Set the string and select the font to use it.

If you are comfortable learning from video, you can refer to this for Launcher Icons and App Bar Icons:

Creating Launcher Icon

Launcher Icons represent our app in the device home screen, on the app list screen, in the Google Play Store and everywhere else. Android 8.0 (Oreo) and above supports Adaptive Icons and can be displayed in different shapes across various platforms. Image Asset Studio provides the option to create these adaptive icons as well as the legacy icons for Android 8.0 below. It also creates web icons(512 x 512 px) that represents our app on the Google Play Store.

The Launcher Icons are stored in the res/mipmap-density folder.

Adaptive and legacy launcher icon

If your app doesn’t support android version 8.0 or above, create legacy icon only for your app.

After opening Image Asset Studio, follow the steps below to create the legacy icons for your android app.

1. For Icon Type field, select Launcher Icons (Adaptive & Legacy).
2. For Foreground Layer tab, select the Asset type to be an image, clip art or text.
3. Then for the Background Layer tab, select a Color or set the Image path for the Asset type to set the background.
4. Then the Legacy tab, check the default settings. You can choose whether you want to generate the legacy icon, round icon and the icon for the web(Google Play Store Icon).
5. Optionally

• Name: Change the name of the foreground and background layer. If the resource with the specified name exists, it will be indicated by an error message. The name can contain lowercase characters, digits and underscore only.
• Trim: Chose yes to adjust the margin between the foreground icon graphic and the background, else select no to keep the source asset as it is.
• Color: Set the color for the clip art or the text asset. Click the field, select the color, click chose and preview your icon.
• Resize: Use the slider to resize your icon. It is disabled for background layer where Color is the asset type.

7. Chose the resource directory for your image asset.

• main/res: For all source set including debug and release
• debug/res: For debugging only
• release/res: For only one version of build, overrides main source set
• custom source set: To define a new source set File -> Project structure -> app -> Build Types. Refer to Configure Build Variants for details
  Output Directories shows the list of folders in which the icons will be created in the Project view in Project Window.

Check the mipmap folders for the Launcher Icons.

Legacy launcher icon only

If your app supports android version 8.0 or above, create adaptive and legacy launcher icon for your app.

After opening Image Asset Studio, follow the steps below to create adaptive and legacy icons for your android app.

1. For Icon Type field, select Launcher Icons (Legacy Only).
2. Select the Asset type to be an image, clip art or text.
3. Optionally

• Name: Change the name of the icon if you don’t want to use the default name. If the resource with the specified name exists, an error message will indicate it. The name can contain lowercase characters, digits and underscore only.
• Trim: Chose yes to adjust the margin between the foreground icon graphic and the background, else select no to keep the source asset as it is.
• Padding: Adjust the source set padding for all four sides. You will have the review on the right side.
• Foreground: Set the color for the clip art or the text asset. Click the field, select the color, click chose and preview your icon.
• Background: Set the color for the background. Click the field, select the color, click chose and preview your icon.
• Scaling: Select crop or S hrink to fit to fit the icon size
• Shape: Select the shape to set a backdrop for the icon. For transparent, select none.
• Effect: Select dogear if you want the dogear effect for your icon, else select none.

5. Chose the resource directory for your image asset.

• main/res: For all source set including debug and release
• debug/res: For debugging only
• release/res: For only one version of the build, overrides main source set
• custom source set: To define a new source set File -> Project structure -> app -> Build Types. Refer to Configure Build Variants for details

Check the mipmap folders for the Launcher Icons.

Creating ActionBar Icons and Tab Icons

ActionBar icons are the ones present on the ActionBar that represents individual action. Whereas, the tab icons are used in the apps having multiple tabs. Using material icons for this category is recommended.

The ActionBar and Tab Icons are stored in the res/drawable-density folder.

You can also use Vector Asset Studio to have XML vectors for these categories of icons. It will reduce the size of your APK considerably.

After opening Image Asset Studio, follow the steps below to create action bar and tab icons for your android app.

1. For Icon Type field, select Action Bar and Tab Icons.
2. Select the Asset type to be an image, clip art or text.
3. Optionally

• Name: Change the name of the icon if you don’t want to use the default name. If the resource with the specified name exists, an error message will indicate it. The name can contain lowercase characters, digits and underscore only.
• Trim: Chose yes to adjust the margin between the foreground icon graphic and the background, else select no to keep the source asset as it is.
• Padding: Adjust the source set padding for all four sides. You will have the review on the right side.
• Theme: Select holo_light or holo_dark as per your app theme. Select custom to set a custom color for the icon.

5. Chose the resource directory for your image asset.

• main/res: For all source set including debug and release
• debug/res: For debugging only
• release/res: For only one version of build, overrides main source set
• custom source set: To define a new source set File -> Project structure -> app -> Build Types. Refer to Configure Build Variants for details

Check the drawable folders for the Icons created.

Creating Notification icons

To learn from the video:

The user sees the notification when he is outside your app. Notification icons come up with these notifications.

The Notification Icons are stored in the res/drawable-density folder. There are a few other folders created too.

• for Android 2.2 (API 8) or lower — icons stored in res/drawable-density
• for Android 2.3 to 2.3.7 (API 9 & 10) — icons stored in res/drawable-density-v9. Gray version of the icon is created
• Android 3 (API 11) or higher — icons stored in res/drawable-density-v11. A white version of the icon is created.

After opening Image Asset Studio, follow the steps below to create notification icons for your android app.

1. For Icon Type field, select Notification Icons.
2. Select the Asset type to be an image, clip art or text.
3. Optionally

• Name: Change the name of the icon if you don’t want to use the default name. If the resource with the specified name exists, an error message will indicate it. The name can contain lowercase characters, digits and underscore only.
• Trim: Chose yes to adjust the margin between the foreground icon graphic and the background, else select no to keep the source asset as it is.
• Padding: Adjust the source set padding for all four side. You will have the review on the right side.

5. Chose the resource directory for your image asset.

• main/res: For all source set including debug and release
• debug/res: For debugging only
• release/res: For only one version of build, overrides main source set
• custom source set: To define a new source set File -> Project structure -> app -> Build Types. Refer to Configure Build Variants for details

Check the drawable folders for the Icons created.

How to Delete an App Icon from a project

To delete the app icon,

1. Select Android View in Project Window
2. Expand the mipmap and drawable folder for the launcher and other icons respectively.
3. Select the sub-folder that matched the name of your icon. It contains the icons of all densities that you created.
4. Right-click on the sub-folder and hit delete.
   Dialog for Safe Delete appears.
5. If you want, select options to find the places where the icon is used and hit OK.
   If you chose to search for usage and the icon has any use in the project, you can view it and then confirm delete. You should delete or replace this reference to successfully compile the project. Android Studio then deletes the file from the project and the drive.
6. Chose Build -> Clean Project.

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