How to create adaptive icons for Android using Android Studio

I have found myself with an issue on my android applications not been able to use adaptive icons, resulting in ugly app icons and strange shapes in different launchers, so... the solution was create adaptive icons and works perfectly. 🙂

On API's > 26 android implements adaptive icons, is possible that this causes issues on app icon in existing applications, just like the following example.

Example: Old app icons

To avoid this is necessary to create an adaptive icon. To do so, you need the following assets:

• Image icon without background, example below (foreground)
• Color background

Foreground icon image

With this elements you need to follow these steps to generate the icon with the Image Asset Studio.

1. Open the project in Android Studio
2. Select the app folder
3. Go to File → New → Image Asset
4. On "Foreground Layer" select the provided image and resize in order to get the proper aspect for the icon
5. On “Background Layer" use the background provided
6. Click on Next button and then Finish
7. After that, the icons are created on the "mipmap-* * * *" folder

Foreground layer configuration

Background layer configuarion

Last screen and creation of assets

You need to add the new rounded icons to the respective roundIcon option on the AndroidManifest.xml

    <application
        ...
        android:icon="@mipmap/ic_launcher"
        android:roundIcon="@mipmap/ic_launcher_round"
        ...>
    </application>

After apply the changes. The app icon will look according to the the guidelines of android for adaptive icons.

Example: Android 9, API 28 stock launcher

Example: Android 7.0, API 24, Smart Launcher

---

All the info was obtained from the official android information
https://developer.android.com/
https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_adaptive
https://developer.android.com/studio/write/image-asset-studio#create-adaptive

🙂

Comments

[mitchGreene]

Nice, thank you for the concise tutorial.

[Sebastián Farías]

Glad you like it

[kiyan]

Many thanks Sebastian.. very helpful

[Juneau Lim]

Oh my god, you rescued my day. Thank you so much!

[Mostafa Soliman]

Nice, thank you

[John Hallett]

Just wanted to say thank you very much. This helped me a lot.

[johnyhawkahsan]

Wowww, Thank you soooo much!

[Kleber Motta]

Thank you man! This should be the default StackOverflow awnser for this problem

[Sebastián Farías]

Thanks for that :P

[Emmanuel Umeanor]

Worked like magic...Thank you very much

[Sebastián Farías]

👍🏼

[Jordão Frazão]

Great, thank you!

[bitten]

This is a great guide! Thanks!

My icon has a gradient background, and now the splash screen looks a bit awkward since it has a solid colour and then the icon with a gradient. It's not as seamless. Is it possible to disable the background of the icon on the splash screen? Or do you recommend a different approach?

[Sebastián Farías]

Maybe. you can try to create a Splash Screen with the gradient background in that case.