App icon size and design: the 2026 spec

One square image, 1024 by 1024 pixels, is now the whole iOS icon deliverable. Google Play wants 512 by 512 as a 32-bit PNG under 1 MB, plus an adaptive icon inside the app. Everything else the system generates.

If you last shipped an icon before 2025, that first sentence is the part that changed.

The spec

	App Store	Google Play
Store artwork	1024 x 1024 px	512 x 512 px
Format	SVG preferred, PNG for raster and gradients	32-bit PNG with alpha
Max file size	not published by Apple	1,024 KB
Colour space	sRGB, Gray Gamma 2.2, or Display P3	sRGB
Corners	Supply square. The system masks.	Supply full square. Play masks at 30% radius.
Shadows	Do not add. The system adds them.	Do not add. Play adds them.
In-app asset	Icon Composer file, or a single 1024 px asset catalog entry	Adaptive icon, 108 x 108 dp
Safe zone	n/a, the mask is predictable	66 x 66 dp centred, 18 dp trimmed on every side
Apple Watch	1088 x 1088 px	n/a

Two numbers do most of the damage in practice: Apple's 1024, and Android's 66 dp safe zone inside a 108 dp canvas.

What Icon Composer changed

Apple used to want a folder of PNGs at every size from 29 px to 1024 px. That workflow is over, and most icon guides online have not caught up.

Today an iOS icon is a layered file built in Icon Composer, up to four layer groups, exported once. Xcode generates every smaller variant at build time, including for older iOS releases. Drop an Icon Composer file into your project and it replaces your existing AppIcon asset catalog outright.

If you are not using Icon Composer, a single 1024 px entry in the asset catalog does the same job. Set the icon to Single Size rather than All Sizes. Apple's own documentation now recommends this for existing projects that still ship a full set: "consider providing a single size when that is all your icon requires."

macOS still needs every size supplied. visionOS wants one 1024 px asset. Only those two are exceptions.

Six appearances, all optional

iOS icons now render in six variants: default, dark, clear light, clear dark, tinted light, and tinted dark. Dark and tinted arrived in 2024. The clear variants came with Liquid Glass in 2025.

You do not have to draw all six. The system generates any you skip. If you do supply them by hand, two rules apply: tinted variants must be greyscale, and dark variants need a transparent background so the system background shows through.

Alternate app icons need their own dark, clear and tinted variants. That is worth knowing before you promise a seasonal icon set.

Stop pre-baking effects

Apple's guidance is unusually blunt here. Do not export the canvas mask. Do not add specular highlights, drop shadows between layers, beveled edges, blurs, or glows. The system applies all of it, and a pre-masked icon gets jagged edges and broken highlights.

Foreground layers should have clearly defined edges rather than soft feathered ones. Varying opacity across foreground layers is encouraged, because it gives the system depth to work with. A background layer, if you import one, has to be full bleed and opaque.

Android: the safe zone is the whole game

An adaptive icon is two layers, each 108 by 108 dp. Every OEM applies its own mask, so only the centre 66 by 66 dp is guaranteed to survive. The outer 18 dp on each side is reserved for masking, parallax and pulsing effects.

Your logo has to be at least 48 by 48 dp and no more than 66 by 66 dp. Layers must not carry their own masks or outline shadows. Vector beats bitmap.

The monochrome layer, for themed icons, is optional and was introduced in Android 13. From Android 16 QPR 2, if you do not supply one, Android themes your icon automatically. That automatic version is rarely as good as one you draw.

Five ways icons go wrong

Designed at 1024, judged at 60. The icon gets approved on a 27 inch monitor and then competes as a 60 pixel thumbnail in a search result. Zoom your artboard out until it is the size of a fingernail. If you cannot tell what it is, the design is not finished, however good it looks large.

Text in the icon. Apple's position is that text does not localize, does not support accessibility, and is usually too small to read. Words like Play, Watch or New are the worst offenders because they add nothing. Your app name is already printed directly underneath the icon.

Rounded corners baked in. Both stores mask for you. Rounding your own corners on iOS breaks the specular highlights; on Play it produces a visibly double-rounded icon. Google's own documentation says it twice: do not round the edges, do not add drop shadows.

Android logo drawn to the full canvas. Draw to 108 dp, ship it, and Samsung crops your logo. The 66 dp safe zone is not a suggestion.

Store performance claims in the artwork. Google explicitly bans icons that indicate ranking, price, promotion, or a Play programme. Award badges, "#1", "Editor's choice", discount flashes, and fake notification dots are all named in the policy. Apple has no equivalent rule, so an icon that passes Google passes both.

How to design one that works

Pick one shape and one idea. The icons that read at thumbnail size are a single silhouette with high contrast against their background, and almost nothing else. Look at the top five results for your main search term, at actual size, and you will notice how few of them contain more than one object.

Colour does more work than form at small sizes. Pick a background that separates you from the four competitors sitting next to you in search, not the one that matches your website.

Then test it properly: on a home screen among real apps, in a search result next to competitors, in dark mode, and tinted. That is four contexts, and an icon that only works in the first one loses you installs in the other three without ever showing up as a problem.

Where this sits in the job

Your icon and your first two screenshots decide whether a search result becomes an install, and the stores feed that conversion rate back into where you rank next week. So this is an ASO task, not a branding task. The screenshot guide covers the other half, and what is ASO covers how the two connect to your metadata.

The assets agent produces a brand-matched icon for every device. You get a draft to approve, not a design brief to write.

Nothing goes live until you approve it.