You design an app icon once, at 1024 × 1024 pixels. Then every platform wants it again at its own sizes, with its own masks, file names and folders. This page lists them all, and says which ones you still have to make by hand and which ones the tools now make for you.
The short answer
If you only read one table, read this one.
| Platform | What you provide | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| iOS / iPadOS | One 1024 × 1024 PNG | Xcode 14 and later builds every device size from it. No transparency. |
| Android launcher | Adaptive icon layers (108 dp) + legacy 48 dp PNGs, per density | Five densities, from 48 px to 432 px. |
| Google Play | 512 × 512 PNG | Up to 1024 KB. Google Play rounds the corners for you. |
| Web | favicon.ico (16, 32, 48), 180 px Apple touch icon, 192 and 512 px manifest icons | Add a maskable 512 px icon for Android home screens. |
Start every icon as a full-bleed square, with no rounded corners and no shadow. Each platform cuts its own shape, and corners you draw yourself end up inside the system's corners, as a visible second outline.
iOS and iPadOS
Since Xcode 14, an iOS app icon needs one image: a 1024 × 1024 pixel PNG in the AppIcon set of your asset catalog. Xcode generates the smaller sizes when it builds the app. You can still switch the asset catalog to "All Sizes" and supply each one yourself, but there is rarely a reason to.
You don't have to make the sizes below. They are worth knowing, because they are where your icon actually gets seen.
| Where | Points | Pixels |
|---|---|---|
| iPhone home screen | 60 pt | 120 px (@2x), 180 px (@3x) |
| iPad Pro home screen | 83.5 pt | 167 px (@2x) |
| iPad home screen | 76 pt | 152 px (@2x) |
| Spotlight | 40 pt | 80 px (@2x), 120 px (@3x) |
| Settings | 29 pt | 58 px (@2x), 87 px (@3x) |
| Notifications | 20 pt | 40 px (@2x), 60 px (@3x) |
| App Store | — | 1024 px |
The home screen is the one that matters. On a phone held at arm's length, 60 points is roughly the size of a fingertip, and your icon sits in a grid of twenty or thirty others.
iOS 18 added dark and tinted versions of the home screen icon. They live in the same AppIcon set as extra 1024 × 1024 images, marked with a dark or tinted appearance. If you don't supply them, iOS creates its own versions from your regular icon.
Android launcher icons
Android has two kinds of launcher icon, and a complete app ships both.
Adaptive icons (Android 8.0 and later) are made of two layers, a foreground and a background, each 108 × 108 dp. The launcher masks them to its own shape: a circle, a squircle or a rounded square, depending on the phone. Only the middle 72 × 72 dp is guaranteed to be visible, and the launcher may move the layers slightly for parallax effects. Keep the important part of your artwork inside a 66 dp circle in the middle.
Legacy icons are plain 48 × 48 dp PNGs, for older Android versions. Most projects also include a round version, ic_launcher_round, for launchers that ask for one.
Android measures in dp, so each icon is exported at five pixel densities:
| Density | Scale | Legacy icon (48 dp) | Adaptive layer (108 dp) |
|---|---|---|---|
| mdpi | 1× | 48 px | 108 px |
| hdpi | 1.5× | 72 px | 162 px |
| xhdpi | 2× | 96 px | 216 px |
| xxhdpi | 3× | 144 px | 324 px |
| xxxhdpi | 4× | 192 px | 432 px |
The files go in app/src/main/res, in one mipmap- folder per density, plus a mipmap-anydpi-v26 folder holding the XML that ties the adaptive layers together. Android Studio's Image Asset tool can build this structure from a single image, but it pads and scales your artwork in ways you'll want to check.
Android 13 added themed icons: if the user turns them on, the launcher recolors every icon to match the wallpaper. It needs a third, single-color layer called monochrome in your adaptive icon. Apps without one keep their normal icon. There's more on this in our guide to dark, tinted and themed app icons.
Google Play
The Play Store listing uses a separate upload:
- 512 × 512 pixels
- 32-bit PNG (transparency allowed, but avoid it)
- 1024 KB at most
- a full square: Google Play applies the rounded corners and shadow itself
This is the icon people see before they install, so it's worth checking at small sizes too. In search results it is shown far smaller than 512 pixels.
Web: favicons and PWA icons
A website or web app needs a handful of files. These cover every current browser:
| File | Size | Used for |
|---|---|---|
| favicon.ico | 16, 32 and 48 px in one file | Browser tabs, bookmarks, older browsers |
| favicon-32x32.png / favicon-16x16.png | 32 px, 16 px | Browser tabs in modern browsers |
| apple-touch-icon.png | 180 px | “Add to Home Screen” on iPhone and iPad |
| icon-192.png | 192 px | Web app manifest (Android home screen, install prompts) |
| icon-512.png | 512 px | Web app manifest, splash screens |
| icon-maskable-512.png | 512 px | Android home screen, cropped to the device's shape |
The maskable icon follows the same idea as Android's adaptive icons: the system may crop it to a circle, so keep your artwork within the middle 80% and fill the rest with a background color. Link the files from your page's <head> and list the manifest icons in site.webmanifest.
watchOS and macOS
watchOS works like iOS: from Xcode 14, one 1024 × 1024 image is enough, and the system shows it as a circle. Keep the subject centered.
macOS icons follow different rules. They have traditionally been drawn as a shape on a transparent canvas rather than a full-bleed square, and the asset catalog asks for sizes from 16 to 512 points at 1× and 2× (up to 1024 pixels). If you ship on the Mac, start from Apple's own macOS templates.
Rules that get icons rejected
Most rejections and ugly results come from the same few mistakes:
- Transparency on iOS. App Store icons must be fully opaque. A transparent corner or background is rejected at upload. Flatten the image onto a solid color first.
- Rounded corners baked in. iOS, Android and Google Play all apply their own mask. Drawn-on corners leave a double edge.
- Artwork outside the safe zone on Android. Anything outside the middle 66 dp of the adaptive icon can be cropped off on some phones.
- Text and fine detail. A name or a tagline that reads at 1024 pixels turns into a smudge at 60. Keep text to a letter or two, if any.
- Using a screenshot or a photo. At icon sizes, a photo becomes a blur of colors. One bold subject with a clear silhouette survives.
Apple's app icon guidelines and Android's adaptive icon guide are the final word on each platform.
Check it at 60 pixels
All of these sizes point to the same lesson: the 1024 pixel image is the master copy, but almost nobody sees it. People see your icon at 60 points on a home screen, at 40 in Spotlight, at 29 in Settings, and in a Play Store search result even smaller.
Before you choose an icon, shrink it to 60 pixels and look at it next to other apps. Then squint. If you can still tell what it is, it works. Our guide on writing prompts for app icons shows what survives that test and what doesn't.
Get every size in one download
Every icon you make with the Appicons.ai app icon generator comes with a free export pack that follows the rules on this page:
- iOS: an
AppIcon.appiconsetfolder with the 1024 × 1024 icon and itsContents.json, flattened so it has no transparency. Drop it into your asset catalog. - Android:
mipmapfolders for all five densities, with legacy, round and adaptive foreground icons, the adaptive icon XML, a background color sampled from your icon, and a 512 px Play Store icon. Copy the folders intoapp/src/main/res. - Web:
favicon.ico, PNG favicons, the Apple touch icon, 192, 512 and maskable 512 px icons, asite.webmanifest, and an HTML snippet for your<head>.
There are step-by-step instructions for iOS and Android, and the pack itself includes a README.