A Guide to Native & PWA Application Icon Specifications

An application icon serves as the visual signature of your digital product across mobile operating systems, desktop platforms, and Progressive Web App (PWA) runtime environments. Creating launcher icons requires precise configuration of scaling, cropping, border radius, and padding metrics to ensure your branding remains recognizable on all screen sizes and background styles.

iOS Launcher & System Settings Icon Standards

The iOS platform enforces strict square canvas submissions. The operating system dynamically overlays a squircle mask (with a border radius of approximately 22.3%) over your assets. Therefore, you must submit square graphics without pre-cut rounded corners:

• iPhone App Icons: 120x120 pixels (2x resolution) and 180x180 pixels (3x resolution) for Retina mobile screens.
• iPad App Icons: 152x152 pixels (2x resolution) and 167x167 pixels (Retina Pro models).
• System Search & Settings: 29x29 pixels (Settings menu), 40x40 pixels (Spotlight listings), and 60x60 pixels (Notification alerts).
• App Store Marketing: A high-resolution 1024x1024 pixel PNG (without transparency) required for App Store submissions.

Android Launcher & Adaptive Icon Specifications

Google Play and modern Android systems utilize Adaptive Icons, which split the icon into a foreground vector logo and a background solid/gradient layer. This allows the system to apply dynamic animations, physics effects, and user-selected shapes (circles, squares, squircles, teardrops) over the launcher icon:

• Density Buckets: Android launcher assets are organized into mipmap directories: 48x48px (mdpi), 72x72px (hdpi), 96x96px (xhdpi), 144x144px (xxhdpi), and 192x192px (xxxhdpi).
• Google Play Store: A 512x512 pixel 32-bit PNG file (supporting transparency) is mandatory for web listing uploads.

Progressive Web App (PWA) Icon Integration

PWAs utilize a manifest.json configuration file to describe application behaviors when installed. To support offline home screen loading across Android Chrome and desktop environments, you must supply at least two core resolutions: 192x192 pixels (for home screen grid alignment) and 512x512 pixels (for splash screen layouts). Enabling a "maskable" attribute allows these icons to behave adaptively similar to Android native launchers.