App icon sizes for iPhone and Android

What the sizes are for

Each size serves a different place. The store icon is what people see when browsing or searching the App Store and Google Play, at large sizes, so it must be crisp. Home screen icons are drawn small, where fine detail disappears. Android adds a twist: device makers apply different shapes, such as circles, squircles and rounded squares, so Android icons are built from layers that the system masks and can animate. Apple's Human Interface Guidelines and Google's Play icon specification describe the exact requirements.

How to prepare one icon for everything

Design the icon as a simple, bold mark that reads at 48 pixels. Export a 1024 x 1024 master. For iPhone, provide square artwork without your own rounded corners or transparency; the system applies the mask. For Google Play, export 512 x 512 as a full square, since Play applies its own corner radius, which its specification puts at 30 percent of the icon size. For Android adaptive icons, place the logo in a foreground layer within the 66 dp safe zone on a 108 dp canvas, and give the background its own layer, often a solid colour. Add a monochrome layer for themed icons.

When it matters

The icon is the most viewed piece of design in any app: on the store page, in search results, on the home screen every day, in notifications and settings. A small business app competes with dozens of familiar icons on a phone, so legibility at small sizes matters more than detail. It also matters for review: Apple can reject builds whose icons are missing, placeholders or misleading.

Common mistakes

Using a wide logo with words, which becomes unreadable when shrunk. Adding rounded corners or a drop shadow that the system then doubles. A transparent background on the iPhone icon. Placing the logo edge to edge on Android, so masks cut it off. Submitting a placeholder icon from a template. Forgetting the monochrome layer, so themed home screens show a generic shape. And an icon that does not match the app's colours or name, which makes people unsure they installed the right app.

Where it shows up in OneCraft

Phone apps built with OneCraft are Expo projects, and the project downloads as a zip with app.json filled, which is where Expo reads the app's icon fields. Builds for Android and iPhone run through Expo on paid plans, as a test build or a store build at 5 credits each, and the owner submits to the App Store and Google Play from their own accounts. Store screenshots have their own sizes, covered on the app store screenshot sizes page.

Questions people ask