Icon png android size

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The icon for your app is quite important. It is the thing that represents your app on the Android device screen. Therefore, a professional and unique icon should be produced for your app. Making a set of app icons could be time consuming. However, Android Studio now has the Launcher Icon Generator to help with the process. Though using a graphics package like Inkscape to make Android icons can produce higher quality images. The Android icon size table in this article summarizes all the relevant information for the required icon sizes.

What is the Android Icon Size for an App?

Android launcher icons can be in jpeg (JPG) format, or more commonly in the Portable Network Graphics (PNG) format. For all the launcher icons you will need two lots of six sizes of PNG or JPG files. One set of six icons are square, plus for newer versions of Android, one set of icons are round. Also, there is the high resolution icon to be produced for the Google Play store listing. The six sizes in pixels are 36×36, 48×48, 72×72, 96×96, 144×144 and 192×192. The Play store high-res icon is 512×512. These sizes are the absolute sizes of the icons. It was recommended in the past to allow for a small margin, hence the area the icon is drawn in will be a bit smaller.

For the, now rarely used, low density screens the 36×36 icon is used. However, Android Studio will not generate the default 36×36 icon. Instead, if the app is run on a device with a low density screen, and the 36×36 icon is not present, then Android will use the 72×72 icon scaled down by half. If required, the 36×36 icon can be included in the app for completeness.

Android Screen Densities

The number of dots (pixels) per inch that an Android device’s screen holds determines how sharp the image on the screen looks. The more Dots Per Inch (DPI) the sharper the image. Android will group screen densities into several classes, medium, high, extra high, extra extra high and extra extra extra high! These are referred to as MDPI, HDPI, XHDPI, XXHDPI and XXXHDPI. There is also a low density class, LDPI, however not many new devices have a low density screen and thus LDPI is no longer important. MDPI is around 160 DPI, HDPI around 240 DPI, XHDPI around 320 DPI, XXHDPI around 480 DPI and XXXHDPI around 640 DPI. (LDPI is around 120 DPI). It is the screen density that determines the Android icon size used.

Android Launcher Icon Name and Location

When a new Android project is created in Android Studio the launcher icon files are called ic_launcher.png and ic_launcher_round.png. You can choose to change the default icon using Android Studio’s built in Asset Studio:

To use Asset Studio open it from within Android Studio using the New menu then select Image Asset. This allows you to configure the launcher icon based on different clip arts, images and colors. The various size icons are created and placed into various mipmap folders in the projects res directory. The folders are mipmap-mdpi, mipmap-hdpi, mipmap-xhdpi, mipmap-xxhdpi and mipmap-xxxhdpi. It you need a low density, LDPI, icon create and put a 36×36 PNG or JPG in a mipmap-ldpi folder.

(In older versions of Android the folders used to be named drawable, i.e. drawable-ldpi, drawable-mdpi, drawable-hdpi, drawable-xhdpi, drawable-xxhdpi and drawable-xxxhdpi. For the very first version of Android, to support Cupcake devices, i.e. API level 3, a single drawable folder was used and contained the 48×48 MDPI PNG or JPG file.)

Notice how the reference to the icon only needs the mipmap part of the folder name. Android works out the correct density icon to use. Android will also scale one of the other density icons if an icon at a certain density is missing (though that may result in a fuzzy icon being displayed on the screen).

Android Icon Margins

The Android Operating System (OS) has evolved since it was released. This means that the icon requirements have changed over the years. The main changes for icons are to support the increase in screen sizes and screen densities. Low density and medium density devices were common. Now high density and extra high density devices are the most common.

Previously it was recommend that the icon included a margin around one twelfth of the total size between the edge of the icon and the image it contained. For example the medium density icon is 48×48 pixels, one twelfth of this is 4, giving a margin of 4 pixels around the icon’s image. This meant the area available for the image was 40×40 (48 minus the margin of 4 pixels on each side).

However, the bigger screens on today’s devices gives more room for the icons so a smaller margin can be used, for example one eighteenth of the icon size. The use of a margin allows image spacing between the icons on a screen, and to allow for any drop shadows, or parts of an image that sticks out from main image content.

The High Resolution Application Icon needed for the Google Play store must be 512×512 in size. This image can have a margin to allow for padding or drop shadows, for example it could be 464×464 on the 512×512 canvas giving 48 pixels for padding and drop shadows. Again the size of the margin may depend upon the type of image being used, but the final file will be a 512×512 in size.

Android Bitmap Assets Ratios

With the 48×48 icon as baseline the 6 launcher icons have the ratios 0.75, 1, 1.5, 2, 3 and 4. These ratios apply to the screen densities. So a high density screen (HDPI) is 1.5 times a medium density screen (MDPI). I.e. 1.5 * 160 = 240. Likewise for the other densities. These ratios generally apply to all images used in an app that target different screen densities. If a bitmap is 100×100 on a medium density screen use the ratios to calculate the bitmap sizes required for other densities (75, 150, 200, 300 and 400 in this case). When generating icons and bitmap assets work at a high resolution and scale down, this prevents pixelation of the images. E.g. a canvas of 576×576 or 864×864 is good for design work. An art-board of those sizes is bigger than the biggest icon required (512×512 for the Google Play store). Even better use a vector drawing package such as Inkscape which effectively allows working at any resolution.

Android Icon Size Table

The following table summarizes the above information, remember to have one square and one round icon for the six screen sizes (or just five if not supporting the out-of-date low density screens).

List of Android Icon Sizes and Locations in the Apps Project

Density	size	Location (under res)	Ratio	Screen	Margin
XXXHDPI	192×192	mipmap-xxxhdpi	4	640 DPI	12 to 16 pixels
XXHDPI	144×144	mipmap-xxhdpi	3	480 DPI	8 to 12 pixels
XHDPI	96×96	mipmap-xhdpi	2	320 DPI	6 to 8 pixels
HDPI	72×72	mipmap-hdpi	1.5	240 DPI	4 to 6 pixels
MDPI	48×48	mipmap-mdpi	1	160 DPI	3 to 4 pixels
LDPI (optional)	36×36	mipmap-ldpi	0.75	120 DPI	2 to 3 pixels
NA	512×512	Google Play	NA	NA	As required

You will find a handful of Android icons used in Tek Eye projects on the Free Launcher Icons, Menu Icons and Android Graphics page, and of course many thousands more on the web.

For information on designing Android icons see the Android Icons Style web page on the Material Design web site.

See Also

• See the Tek Eye Android Studio example projects to learn Android app programming.
• For a full list of the articles on Tek Eye see the full site Index

Author: Daniel S. Fowler Published: 2018-05-06

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Android Icon Sizes Made Simple (4.1)

This article has now been superseded by the latest Lollipop 6.0 Android Icon Size Guide. Please click on the image below for the latest information.

What are Android Icon Sizes?

It is a simple question but even Android, who provide better documentation than most, seems to make you want to work a little for the answer. Fear not, I have done the work for you!

Android Icon Sizes – App Launcher

What sizes do I need for Android App launcher icons? If you want to design your own or commission a professional to design your custom icons, you really need to know the right sizes.

Quick answer: 48 px, 72 px, 96 px, 144 px, 192 px & 512 px (for Google Play Store).

What about the Google Play Icon?

Google play requires a single additional version of the Icon in 512 x 512 pixels.

Understanding Android Icon Sizes

Android approach their Icon Size documentation slightly differently to other platforms, concentrating on different pixel densities rather than the simple facts we want. However, it is worth taking a moment to understand why they use this approach.

As technology has progressed, manufacturers have brought out hardware with ever increasing resolutions and pixel density. An increase in pixel density or dots per inch (dpi), basically means more image information can be displayed with.

• MDPI – Medium Pixel Density – also known as the ‘Baseline’
• HDPI – High Pixel Density
• XHDPI – Extra High Pixel Density
• XXHDPI – Extra Extra High Pixel Density

Note: Android also supports low-density (LDPI) screens, but you normally don’t need to create custom assets at this size because Android effectively down-scales your HDPI assets by 1/2 to match the expected size.

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Android Icon Sizes – User interface

All Android icons follow the same scaling rules, so when creating your icon files you must make 5 versions to cover all the platforms available. The table below shows the pixel densities and icon sizes for the different types of user interface icons used by Android:

640 dpi

MDPI (Baseline)	HDPI	XHDPI	XXHDPI	XXXHDPI
Scale	1 x	1.5 x	2 x	3 x	4 x
DPI
App Launcher Icons	48 px	72 px	96 px	144 px	192 px
Action bar Icons	32 px (24px inset)	48 px	64 px	96 px	128 px
Small / Contextual Icons	16 px (12px inset)	24 px	32 px	48 px	64 px
Notification Icons	24 px (22px inset)	36 px	48 px	72 px	96 px

Whilst the user interface icons follow the same scaling rules as the app launcher icon, they also have some additional display rules of their own:

Android Action bar Icon Sizes

Action Bar Icons require a file size of 32×32 pixels at the baseline size (MDPI). However, the image itself must be no more than 24×24 pixels centred within the Icon file.

The Icon Design must be single colour #666666 with a transparency set to 60%

Android Small / Contextual Icon Sizes

Action Bar Icons require a file size of 16×16 pixels at the baseline size (MDPI). However, the image itself must be no more than 12×12 pixels centred within the Icon file.

The Icon Design must be single colour #666666 with a transparency set to 60%

Android Notification Icon Sizes

Action Bar Icons require a file size of 24×24 pixels at the baseline size (MDPI). However, the image itself must be no more than 22×22 pixels centred within the Icon file.

The Icon Design must be single colour white, #ffffff.

Android’s own icon guide can be found here:

I hope this Android Icon size guide has been helpful. Please let me know if there is something else you would like me to add or elaborate on. Thanks!

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30 thoughts on “Android Icon Sizes Made Simple (4.1)”

Thanks for the reply.

“Note: Android also supports low-density (LDPI) screens, but you normally don’t need to create custom assets at this size because Android effectively down-scales your HDPI assets by 1/2 to match the expected size.”

I’ll add that to the Blog post.

I hope that helps.

Hi guys. Is it possible to set the height of the app icon to match the height of the action bar?

Thanks for posting. I don’t work on App development, just design to spec but I believe if you try and use larger icons sizes in the Action bar (or anywhere else) Android will just scale them to the standard size.

So I would say a tentative no but an App Developer may be able to help you more.

Sorry but I don’t get the density-resolution-dp-dpi thing. So if I want to support all densities, I should make 5 files – 48X48px/72X72px/96X96px/144X144px/192X192px.

That’s fine, but what resolution in pixels/inch should I input?
Is it 72 for all of them as per default? Or is it 160/240/320/480/640 pixels/inch?

I really don’t get what values for width, height and resolution to input for each file in Photoshop new file window!

Anyone willing to explain and help?

I’ll keep it simple, just use 72dpi in Photoshop, along with the file dimensions in pixels.

Clear and simple. Thank you!

Thanks for this! Would be nice if you could include the inset/un-padded dimensions in your table too, e.g. for notification icons.

Also, the ‘Iconography’ part of the Android design docs says that notification icons should be white, not #666666. I’m not sure about transparency, I’ve taken a gamble on all pixels being either white or transparent and it looks OK.

Thanks for the notification colour correction, post updated. 🙂
If I can fit the inset dimensions in the table I will.

Nice and simple and extremely useful.
Thank you very much!

I wrote a command line tool which can convert icons automatically to the right sizes for the different screen densities and which also saves everything in the right directories – it even supports the version structure of androids res/ folder.

The main idea is to have one SVG file for each icon. You do not have to have different SVG files for the states (e.g. enabled and disabled) but you can use icon-converter to change one or more colors in the icon.
Having all the SVG’s, you can simply write a .sh script to “compile” all the icons at once, meaning that icon-converter creates all PNG’s with the given settings (density, colors, scale, even versioning is supported, renaming files so that you can find them after compiling). The PNG’s are then stored directly in the right drawable-directories. E.g. when you change an icon which has different states, you only have to execute your script once and do not have to export PNG’s by yourself.

Please have a look at this tool, there are some examples online:
iconconverter.android-msapps.com

It runs on Linux and Windows.

Thanks for that, sounds useful. What kind of sampling algorithm does it use?

The conversion from .SVG to .PNG is done by the command line tool “convert” (ImageMagic).
On top of this I implemented the “android rules” and the recoloring.

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