App Icon Design Guide: iOS, Android, and macOS Specs (2026)

App icons are the most ruthless brand surface you'll ever ship. They appear at 60×60 on an iPhone home screen, 48×48 in the Android app drawer, and 29×29 in a Spotlight result. Every competing app surrounding yours has had iteration after iteration to optimize for visibility at those sizes. Your icon either earns the tap or doesn't, and there's no second viewing.

This guide covers the actual platform specifications for iOS, Android, and macOS in 2026, the legibility rules that survive at 29 pixels, and the submission gotchas that cause App Store rejections.

iOS specifications

Apple's App Store accepts a single 1024×1024 PNG (no transparency, no rounded corners — the OS applies the squircle mask automatically). From that one source, iOS generates every smaller size you need.

Context	Size	Where it appears
App Store listing	1024×1024	Search results, app page
Home screen	180×180	Standard iPhone home screen
Spotlight	120×120	Spotlight + Notification Center
Settings	87×87	iOS Settings list
Notifications	60×60	Push notification badges
iPad home	167×167	iPad home screen

Apple's "squircle" (super-ellipse) corner radius is roughly 22.37% of the icon side. You don't draw it — the OS applies it automatically. **Critical: do not pre-round your icon corners.** If you do, the OS rounds them again, producing a visible inset corner-within-a-corner.

#### iOS 18 tinted and dark icons

Since iOS 18 (Sept 2024), apps can ship three icon variants: light (default), dark, and tinted (monochrome that adopts the user's wallpaper accent color).

Light: Your standard color icon. Required.

Dark: Same composition adjusted for a dark home screen — usually means a darker background with the same foreground.

Tinted: Monochrome silhouette. iOS applies the user's chosen accent color across all tinted icons.

You ship all three as separate 1024×1024 PNGs in your Asset Catalog. Apps without dark/tinted variants look out of place when users enable those modes — and an increasing share do (Apple reports ~40% of iOS users on Dark Appearance in 2026).

Android specifications

Google Play accepts a 512×512 PNG for the store listing. On-device, modern Android uses **adaptive icons**: two PNG layers (foreground and background) that the OS composites with system-defined masks (circle, squircle, teardrop, square — varies by manufacturer).

Context	Size	Notes
Play Store listing	512×512	Single PNG, 32-bit
Adaptive icon	108×108 dp	Two layers: foreground + background
Safe zone	66×66 dp centered	All critical content lives here

The adaptive icon trap: the OS masks your icon to fit the device's preferred shape. If your design has elements near the edges, they'll get clipped on devices that use the circle mask. **Keep all critical content within the 66×66 dp safe zone** — that's a circle inset 21 dp from each edge of the 108×108 dp canvas.

You can preview adaptive icon behavior in Android Studio's Asset Studio. Run it before shipping.

#### Themed icons (Material You)

Android 13+ supports monochrome themed icons that adapt to the user's wallpaper-derived color theme. Ship a monochrome PNG alongside your adaptive icon foreground. The OS does the tinting.

macOS specifications

macOS icons use a squircle shape similar to iOS but with explicit padding. Apple's icon template provides a "container" inside which your icon design sits — with ~10% padding around the edges so the design doesn't crowd the corners.

Size	Use
1024×1024	App store + Finder large preview
512×512	Mission Control, Finder
256×256	Finder list
128×128	Stack previews
64×64	Dock at small zoom
32×32	Sidebar, document badges
16×16	Title bars

Unlike iOS, macOS icons can use transparency. Many modern macOS icons use a tilted-perspective squircle (Sketch, Figma, Notion) to differentiate from iOS app icons.

The 29-pixel test

Forget the 1024×1024 you designed at. Your icon's actual job happens at 29×29 (Spotlight search) and 60×60 (push notifications).

Mid-design check: render your icon at 29×29 next to 5 competitor icons. Three failure modes show up here:

Multi-element designs muddy together. — If you can't tell what's foreground vs background at 29px, simplify until you can.

Thin strokes disappear. — Anything under 1.5px equivalent at full size won't survive scaling. Make every stroke significantly thicker than you think necessary.

Text becomes illegible. — Don't include text. The single exception: a bold single letter, like Gmail's M or Facebook's f — and even those are quite large within the icon frame.

Design principles that work

One focal element. — Apple's icon is an apple. Spotify's is sound waves. Slack's is a hashtag-flower. Pick one thing.

Bold silhouette. — The icon should be recognizable even if you fill the entire foreground with a single solid color.

2 colors maximum — for the foreground. Background is usually a single solid or gentle gradient.

Distinctive shape language. — Sharp geometric (Telegram), organic curves (Pinterest), or layered (Photoshop). Pick one and commit.

No text — except single-letter logos.

Common rejection reasons

App Store reviewers reject icons for:

Using copyrighted symbols (Apple's official icons, other apps' logos, brand symbols without licensing).

Misleading content (icon depicts functionality the app doesn't have).

Pre-rounded corners on iOS (causes the double-corner visual).

Including non-iconic content like screenshots or marketing text within the icon.

Transparency on iOS (App Store icons cannot have transparent backgrounds).

Submission checklist

Before submitting:

[ ] iOS: 1024×1024 PNG, 32-bit RGB or 24-bit RGB, no alpha channel

[ ] iOS dark mode: separate 1024×1024 PNG with dark-tuned palette

[ ] iOS tinted: monochrome 1024×1024 PNG (Apple applies user's accent)

[ ] Android: 512×512 PNG, 32-bit

[ ] Android adaptive: 108×108 dp foreground + 108×108 dp background, both PNGs

[ ] Android monochrome: 432×432 px PNG for themed icons (Android 13+)

[ ] macOS: 1024×1024 PNG with transparency, plus optionally an ICNS file with all sizes

[ ] Tested at 29×29 against competitors in the same App Store category

How AI generation helps

LogoQuill's app-icon maker generates at 1024×1024 with a prompt explicitly tuned for App Store / Play Store legibility — bold silhouette, 2-color palette, no text, centered composition. The output exports as iOS-ready (no transparency, no rounded corners) and Android-ready (with separate foreground/background layers when you generate at the Android preset).

The fastest workflow: generate 4–6 variants with different focal symbols, pick the strongest, then run a 29px test against your competitors before submitting.

Generate an App Store-ready icon →