Your app icon used to be one picture. Now people choose how their home screen looks, and the system redraws every icon to match: darker at night, tinted to one color, or recolored to follow the wallpaper. This guide covers what iOS and Android ask for, and how to give them something that still looks like your app.
One icon, several versions
| Version | Platform | What you supply |
|---|---|---|
| Default | iOS, Android | Your regular icon |
| Dark | iOS 18 and later | A 1024 × 1024 version on a dark background |
| Tinted | iOS 18 and later | A 1024 × 1024 grayscale version; the system adds the color |
| Themed | Android 13 and later | A single-color monochrome layer in your adaptive icon |
All of these are optional. They're also what people see when they pick a dark or tinted home screen, so they're worth a few minutes.
iOS: dark and tinted icons
From iOS 18, people can switch their home screen icons to dark or tinted. You provide each version as an extra 1024 × 1024 image in the same AppIcon set in your asset catalog. In Xcode, select the set, open the Attributes inspector and set Appearances to "Any, Dark, Tinted". Two new image slots appear next to the default one.
Dark icons sit on a dark background. Apple's templates use a near-black gradient behind the artwork. Keep the foreground recognizably yours: the same shape, in colors bright enough to stand out against the dark.
Tinted icons are grayscale. iOS takes the brightness of each pixel and paints it in the tint color the user picked, so light areas become strong color and dark areas fall back toward black. Make the subject the lightest part of the image and the background the darkest.
In both cases, the background is where most of the change happens. An icon that is one clear subject on a plain background adapts easily. An icon that is a full scene from edge to edge has no separate subject to keep, so its dark and tinted versions tend to turn into a flat, muddy square.
With iOS 26, Apple also introduced the Liquid Glass look and its Icon Composer app for building layered icons. Icons made the older way, with images in an asset catalog, still work.
Android: themed icons
Android 13 added themed icons. When the user turns them on (usually under wallpaper and style settings), supported launchers redraw every app icon in colors taken from the wallpaper.
To take part, your adaptive icon needs a third layer, monochrome, next to its foreground and background:
<adaptive-icon xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
<background android:drawable="@color/ic_launcher_background"/>
<foreground android:drawable="@mipmap/ic_launcher_foreground"/>
<monochrome android:drawable="@mipmap/ic_launcher_monochrome"/>
</adaptive-icon>
The monochrome layer is a silhouette of your subject: one color, with transparency everywhere else. The launcher ignores its color and uses only its shape. It is 108 × 108 dp like the other layers, and the same safe zone applies: keep the shape inside the middle 66 dp. See our app icon size guide for the pixel sizes at each density.
What happens if you skip them
- iOS: if you don't supply dark and tinted images, iOS creates its own from your regular icon. Simple icons usually come through fine. Busy or full-bleed ones often don't.
- Android: apps without a monochrome layer keep their normal, full-color icon when themed icons are on. It works, but it stands out among the themed icons around it.
Neither is a rejection risk. They only change how your icon looks next to everyone else's.
Designing an icon that survives every version
The same habits that make an icon read at 60 pixels make it adapt well:
- One subject, separate from its background. Dark, tinted and themed versions all keep the subject and replace the background. Give them a subject to keep.
- A strong silhouette. Themed icons on Android are only a shape. If your subject isn't recognizable as a solid silhouette, it won't be recognizable themed.
- Contrast by brightness, not only by color. Tinted icons on iOS throw the colors away. A red subject on a green background can turn into two similar grays.
- No text. It rarely survives the default size, let alone a monochrome silhouette.
Our prompt guide shows how to ask an AI generator for icons built this way.
Getting the files
Every icon from the Appicons.ai app icon generator comes with a free export pack: an iOS AppIcon.appiconset, Android adaptive icons for every density and web icons. Until you add dark, tinted or monochrome versions, iOS and Android fall back to the behavior described above.
Step-by-step install instructions are on the iOS and Android pages.