App icon sizing is one of those problems that feels solved until submission day, when App Store Connect rejects your upload over transparency, or Android renders your logo cropped inside a circle you never designed for. The specs live in three different sets of documentation — Apple's, Google's, and the Play Console's — and they've each shifted over the years.
This guide consolidates everything current for 2026: the one master size that matters on iOS, how Xcode's single-size option changed the game, Android's adaptive icon math, and the store listing requirements for both platforms. At the end, one honest shortcut: you only ever need to design one image.
iOS App Icon Sizes in 2026: Start (and Mostly End) at 1024x1024
The single most important dimension on iOS is 1024x1024 pixels. That's the App Store marketing icon, and since Xcode 14 it can also be the only icon you ship: enable the 'Single Size' option in your asset catalog, provide one 1024x1024 PNG, and Xcode automatically scales every runtime size for you — home screen, Settings, Spotlight, notifications, the lot.
Apple's requirements for that master icon are strict and are the top cause of upload rejections: it must be a PNG (or high-quality JPEG) with no transparency and no alpha channel, square with no rounded corners (iOS applies the corner mask itself), in sRGB or Display P3 color. If your icon has any transparent pixels — even one stray corner pixel from an export — App Store Connect will refuse it, so flatten onto a solid background before exporting.
If you support older Xcode versions or want manual control, the classic runtime sizes still apply: 180x180 (iPhone home screen @3x), 120x120 (@2x), 167x167 (iPad Pro), 152x152 (iPad), 80x80 and 120x120 (Spotlight), 58x58 and 87x87 (Settings), and 40x40/60x60 (notifications). With iOS 18+ you should also check how your icon looks in dark and tinted appearance modes, which Apple derives from your artwork unless you supply variants.
Android Adaptive Icon Sizes and Requirements
Android has worked differently since Android 8.0: adaptive icons are built from two layers — a foreground (your logo) and a background — each supplied at 108x108 dp, which at the xxxhdpi density means 432x432 pixels. The launcher then masks the combined layers into whatever shape the device maker chose: circle, squircle, rounded square, or teardrop.
The critical rule is the safe zone. Only the central 66 dp of the 108 dp canvas (roughly the middle 61%) is guaranteed visible after masking; everything outside can be cropped, and the edges may shift during the parallax animations some launchers apply. If your logo touches the edges of your source image, a circular mask will decapitate it — this is the number one Android icon mistake. Keep the logo comfortably centered with generous padding, and give the background layer a solid color or simple pattern that can bleed to the edges harmlessly.
For legacy devices and fallbacks you still ship density-specific launcher icons: 48x48 (mdpi), 72x72 (hdpi), 96x96 (xhdpi), 144x144 (xxhdpi), and 192x192 (xxxhdpi). And separately from everything in your APK, the Google Play Store listing requires a 512x512 32-bit PNG — Play now applies its own corner rounding and drop shadow, so upload a full-bleed square, not a pre-rounded one.
Generate All App Icon Sizes from One Image (the Sane Workflow)
Nobody should be exporting fifteen PNGs by hand in 2026. Design one master image and let a generator produce the full set:
- Step 1: Design your icon at 1024x1024 pixels — flat PNG, solid background, no transparency, no rounded corners.
- Step 2: Keep the logo within the central ~60% of the canvas so Android's adaptive masking can't crop it.
- Step 3: Open Toolyfied's free App Icon Generator — no sign-up, no watermark, files up to 50 MB.
- Step 4: Upload your master image and let it generate every iOS and Android size in one pass.
- Step 5: Download the complete set and drop the files into your Xcode asset catalog and Android res/mipmap folders.
- Step 6: Build to a real device and check the icon on the home screen, in Settings, and against both light and dark wallpapers.
The Details That Get Apps Rejected (or Just Look Bad)
Beyond raw dimensions, a few recurring issues are worth a pre-flight check. Transparency is the big one: iOS marketing icons must be fully opaque, while the Play Store's 512x512 accepts an alpha channel but will composite it against white — rarely what you want. Fine details and thin text that look great at 1024px turn to mush at 48px; test your design at small sizes early, and simplify if you squint. If your source logo isn't square, crop it properly with the image cropper before generating rather than letting a tool stretch it.
Watch file weight too. Store consoles cap icon file sizes (Play's 512px icon must stay under 1 MB), and an unoptimized PNG export can blow past that; a pass through the image compressor fixes it without visible loss. Finally, keep your 1024x1024 master under version control — every future size, platform, and store requirement gets generated from that one file, and regenerating a full set with the App Icon Generator takes seconds when specs shift again.
