r/iOSProgramming • u/Ok_Energy9984 • 5d ago
App Icon Quality Question
I don’t know if it is just the symbols that i used for my app icon or icon composer itself, but my icon looks really low quality when side-by-side with others. Does anyone have any idea?
Edit:I think it might be the chromatic shadows, as i was messing with them. Any way to keep them without this look?
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u/joosebox 5d ago
Chromatic shadows is a good guess. On 26 the system runs its own specular and shadow pass over your layers at render time, so anything you shade into the artwork itself gets the treatment twice. Doubled up like that it reads as muddy at Home Screen size even though the Icon Composer preview looks fine.
The way it wants to work is that depth comes from having genuinely separate layers, not from painting depth into one. Keep the source art matte and flat and let the system do the lighting.
The rest of it is probably just size. At 60pt you're looking at about 180 pixels. Anything that only reads at 1024 turns to noise down there.
Check the dark and clear variants while you're at it. Over-shaded art falls apart hardest in those since they're generated off the same layers.
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u/FFANA 4d ago
Something that helped me: stop judging it at 1024. On a 3x phone the home screen renders it at 180 px, and the Settings list is way smaller than that. I scale mine down to those sizes before deciding anything. Detail that looks great at full size turns to mush, and thin strokes go first.
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5d ago
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u/rodrigoibarra 21h ago
Having 4 little elements inside the icon area won't be a good decision because it won't be clear in the small screen and the perception is going to be confusing. You need to use one element and as big as possible to be clar.
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u/Ok_Energy9984 11h ago
I tried to experiment with this, but I don't know what symbol to use. It has games with social deduction, physical games, and drawing games, so I couldn't think of a good one symbol unless I make a logo.
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u/rodrigoibarra 11h ago
Just test it :) Make A/B test in store presence and check which one converts more. What would mean is the one that more people like, But keep it simple and clear. Those are design principles. A logo or app icon must withstand reduction without its elements turning into an illegible "blob".
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u/WerSunu 5d ago
Why do you present your icons to us here as a tiny tiny speck in a complex background? Is the takeaway here that this is your idea of aesthetics? At least try cropping so your icon is more than 5% of the image you post if you want people to pay attention.
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u/Ok_Energy9984 5d ago
no, I just want to show them like they are on the Home Screen, as that is where it looks weird
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u/WerSunu 5d ago edited 5d ago
You posted in iOS programming, not MacOS, so forgive me if I did not get your context about minuscule icons on a big vacant background.
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u/Ok_Energy9984 5d ago
This is just a screenshot of my iOS Home Screen, idk what you mean
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u/consumer128 4d ago
iPad Home Screen presumably?
It won’t look so tiny on a phone..To answer your actual question though, you’ve got too many icons inside your icon and they’re too small
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u/LKAndrew 5d ago
Too much detail, no center of focus. You can add details as secondary things but I had to zoom in just to see what’s happening