Support new 'adaptive' icons in Android 8+

[fiznool]

Android 8+ has a set of new guidelines for app icons: https://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_adaptive

The general idea is that you provide an icon and a background colour. The icon has transparency, and is overlaid onto the background colour. The whole thing is then masked by the device, to produce a circle, square, rounded square, etc. To facilitate a circular mask, you can also specify a different icon to use for circular masks.

I'm adding this issue more as a 'nice to have', as it would require a few changes for sure! Some way of asking:

• whether this behaviour is desired at all (using the 'legacy' launcher icons will still work)
• if so, whether a different icon file should be used, and what background colour to use

and then the associated changes to the XML files as described in the above link.

Unfortunately I don't have any spare time to dedicate to a PR right now, but thought I'd bring it up in case it was on your roadmap.

Thanks for a great library - it's been a big timesaver for me 😄

[dwmkerr]

I think it would be great to support this, thanks for sharing! I'll take a look at it when I get a little time, probably a couple of weeks from now :)

[valposv]

@dwmkerr what's the status of this issue? Is it expected to be done soon?

[dwmkerr]

Hi @the-rs it'll be a couple of weeks still before I can look at this, but will be using it for a project I'm working on then so will definitely be getting onto it1

[hrhosni]

Hey @dwmkerr . Just looking for an update on this issue?
Thanks!

[dwmkerr]

I got the Windows build and tests working which slowed me down, I can actually and finally look at this now.

One thing I'd love is a suggestion on how we manage the multiple images - should it be something like a convention to have:

icon.png
icon.adaptive.layer1.png
icon.adaptive.layer2.png
icon.adaptive.mask.png

Or command line flags? At the moment, here are my design goals:

1. For people not using the feature, it should not interfere with them
2. For people who do want to use the feature, they should be able to use it with very little effort and intuitive documentation (I'm even thinking of something like app-icon init to create template icons).
3. People should be able to keep the icons outside of the root of their project if they want, to avoid cluttering the base

Does anyone else have any suggestions?

[hrhosni]

Hi @dwmkerr !
Well if we can mimic whatever the tool that's built in Android Studio does, it'd be great. I'm not sure where it places the adaptive icons and what it names them but everything works great when I use it.

As for the design goals, they seem pretty comprehensive to me.

Again, thanks a lot for your efforts. They're much appreciated.

[valposv]

Hello @dwmkerr !
I think command line flags would be more suitable rather than explicit creation. Template icons is also pretty useful feature to have. Can we expect adaptive icons support soon?
Regards. Thanks

[dwmkerr]

Yep will be pushing it in shortly!

[valposv]

@dwmkerr hello, what's the status?

[pie6k]

@dwmkerr any update on this?

[dwmkerr]

OK for those watching the issue, here's the progress. I'll keep the updates on this comment:

• Add the init command, which will generate the initial icon (feat: added the 'init' command #77).
• Update the docs to indicate we are bringing in experimental support for adaptive icons, via the forthcoming --adaptive-icons flag docs: adaptive icons experimental feature notes #80
• Introduce the --adaptive-icons parameter to the init command, which will create adaptive icons feat: support adaptive icons for init command #81
• Introduce the --adaptive-icons parameter to the generate command which will generate them interim: interim commit of the generate function #86
• show the icons in the README to make it clear what will be generated

Current Issues

• Captions are not supported for Adaptive Icons feat: standardise icons #90
• The Adaptive Icons are not visually in the same style as the 'standard' icons feat: standardise icons #90

[dwmkerr]

OK! Finally 😄

This took a lot longer than expected to get right, and I am still not 100% sure it is perfect, but adaptive icon support is available in v0.11.0

In short, first create some template icons:

$ app-icon init --adaptive-icons
icon.png created
icon.background.png created
icon.foreground.png created

This will create the icons you can use as your main template icons. Then spit out each size with:

$ app-icon generate --adaptive-icons

At the moment, all adaptive icon features are 'opt-in' with the --adaptive-icons flag, until I've seen that it seems to be working well for a large enough group of people.