Essential App Icon Size iOS Guide for 2026

An icon designed for 1024 pixels often falls apart at 60 pixels. The App Store search result thumbnail is 60 by 60. The Spotlight search row is 80 by 80. The home screen on iPhone is 120 by 120 at 3x density. Most users see your icon at one of these three sizes, never at 1024.

Design and review your icon at the smallest size first, then scale up. If your icon needs more than two colors and one focal element to be recognizable at 60 by 60, the design is too complex. Linear, Notion and Cash App all pass the 60 pixel test, that is not a coincidence.

Apple ships both the original icon and the dark mode and tinted variants on iOS 18 and later. Each variant gets re-rendered at every required size, so a poorly optimized master file produces three sets of blurry icons. Spend the time to nail the master file, the rest is mechanical export.

Your master icon must be exactly 1024 by 1024 pixels, RGB color space, sRGB profile, no alpha channel, no layers, exported as a flat PNG. Apple's submission system rejects PNG files with transparency for the App Store icon. Rounded corners are added by iOS automatically, do not bake them in or your icon will look double-rounded.

Avoid photographs and screenshots inside the icon, Apple's review team flags both. Stick to vector or vector-style artwork, save the source file in Figma, Sketch or Illustrator so you can re-export at any size without quality loss. Embed your color values as styles or tokens, that way you can refresh palette without redrawing the whole icon.

Color space matters, sRGB is required for the App Store icon, Display P3 is allowed for in-app icons starting iOS 17. If you design in Display P3, save a separate sRGB export for the App Store submission. Color shift between the two spaces is small but visible on saturated reds and greens.

Here is the complete table, every size your project needs in 2026. iPhone notification at 2x is 40 by 40, at 3x is 60 by 60. iPhone settings at 2x is 58 by 58, at 3x is 87 by 87. iPhone Spotlight at 2x is 80 by 80, at 3x is 120 by 120. iPhone app at 2x is 120 by 120, at 3x is 180 by 180. iPad notification at 1x is 20 by 20, at 2x is 40 by 40. iPad settings at 1x is 29 by 29, at 2x is 58 by 58. iPad Spotlight at 1x is 40 by 40, at 2x is 80 by 80. iPad app at 1x is 76 by 76, at 2x is 152 by 152. iPad Pro app at 2x is 167 by 167. App Store at 1x is 1024 by 1024.

That is 17 sizes if you support both iPhone and iPad. Xcode 16 introduced the single-size icon set, you provide one 1024 by 1024 file and Xcode generates the rest at build time. This is the recommended approach for 2026, it cuts setup time and removes a class of mistakes where you forget to update one of the 17 files when refreshing the icon.

If you must export each size manually, automate it. Figma plugins like Icon Resizer and Sketch's iOS icon template export the full set in one click. Never resize manually in Photoshop, the bilinear scaling Photoshop uses by default produces softer icons than the bicubic scaling Figma and Sketch apply.

Open your Xcode project, navigate to Assets.xcassets, and create a new App Icon set. In Xcode 16 you get the option of single size or multiple sizes. Pick single size unless you have a reason to provide custom variants per size, like a slightly simpler icon at 60 by 60.

Drag your 1024 by 1024 PNG into the slot. Xcode validates the file synchronously, if you see a red badge the file is wrong size, has alpha, or uses an unsupported color space. Fix the source file, do not edit it inside Xcode. The asset catalog is a thin wrapper, the build still uses the file you provided.

For dark mode and tinted variants on iOS 18 and later, add them as alternative variants in the same icon set. The variants are optional but Apple recommends them, your icon looks visibly inconsistent on the home screen if other apps support tinted mode and yours does not. The tinted variant should be a grayscale version of your icon, iOS applies the tint automatically based on the user's wallpaper.

Most teams treat these as the same file, then discover the App Store rejects their submission because the App Store icon was bundled inside the app. The App Store icon is uploaded separately during App Store Connect submission, not bundled with the app binary.

The bundled in-app icons are the 17 sizes Xcode generates for the home screen, settings, Spotlight and notifications. They ship inside the IPA. The App Store icon is the 1024 by 1024 PNG you upload to the marketing page in App Store Connect, it is what users see in search results and on your product page.

Apple recommends both icons look identical, but you can deviate slightly. Some apps use a more polished or detailed version for the App Store icon, since it renders at 1024 and can carry more detail than the home screen 180 by 180 version. If you do this, keep the silhouette and primary color identical, otherwise users get confused when they tap the App Store icon and see a different icon land on their home screen.

Three icon rejection reasons make up roughly 80% of cases this year. The first is alpha channel, your file has transparency that Apple rejects on the App Store icon slot. Flatten the file in your design tool, export with a solid background, problem solved.

The second is photographic content. Apple's review guideline 4.0 requires icons to be original artwork. Stock photography, screenshots of competing apps, or screenshots of Apple's own UI elements like the Photos icon or the Camera button all trigger rejection. If you want a photographic feel, recreate the look in vector art or 3D rendering rather than using a real photo.

The third is icon similarity to existing apps. If your icon looks like a slight remix of WhatsApp's green chat bubble or Instagram's gradient camera, Apple may reject under guideline 4.1. Run a reverse image search of your final 1024 file before submitting, if the top results are existing apps in your category, redesign. The rejection cycle for similarity issues is 1 to 2 weeks of lost time.

Open your finished icon in Preview or any image viewer, set the zoom to 6%. The icon now displays at roughly 60 by 60 pixels, the App Store search result size. Look at it from arm's length. Can you identify it in under one second? If yes, the icon passes the most important real-world test.

Build a small mockup grid that places your icon next to the top 5 competitors in your category. Top 5 because users will see them all together in category and search results. If your icon disappears in the lineup, it is not differentiated enough on color, silhouette or focal element. Adjust the dominant color first, that is the cheapest change with the biggest impact.

Run the same test in dark mode and on a colored wallpaper. iOS 18 home screens vary widely by wallpaper choice, an icon that pops on a black wallpaper can vanish on a saturated wallpaper of the same color. The tinted variant solves part of this, but the original variant still needs to work on common wallpaper colors.

iOS 18 added tinted and dark mode variants to the App Icon system. They are optional, but apps that support them feel native to the OS and apps that do not look out of place on tinted home screens. Provide a grayscale version of your icon for the tinted variant, iOS handles the colorization based on the user's wallpaper.

Live Activities and widgets share the icon system in 2026, your icon may render at sizes outside the standard 17 if you ship a widget or Lock Screen accessory. The widget system uses the 60 by 60 and 80 by 80 derivatives directly, no separate widget icon is needed.

Apple Intelligence on iOS 18 and 19 occasionally renders your icon at non-standard sizes for system suggestions and Spotlight. The single-size icon set in Xcode 16 handles these correctly without extra work, another reason to migrate from the multi-size catalog if you have not already.