How to Generate Perfect App Icons

Start with a square master

Always start from a square master at the largest size you'll ever need — 1024×1024 is the safe ceiling. Every smaller size is a downsample of that master. Never resize a small icon to a large one.

Pad like the platforms expect

iOS clips icons to a rounded rectangle and applies a glossy mask. Android Adaptive Icons crop a square to a circle, square or rounded square depending on the launcher. Always leave 6–10% safe-area padding around the visual mark so the system mask doesn't bite into it.

Check the halo on white

The most embarrassing icon bug is a near-invisible halo on white screens. Always preview your final icon on a pure white background before shipping. If you see a faint color outline, your background removal didn't decontaminate the edge.

Generate every size, ship the ones you need

It's cheap to generate every preset size at once. It's expensive to discover three weeks later that your favicon is a stretched 16×16 favicon.ico instead of a clean 32×32 PNG.

Autocropper outputs 16, 32, 48, 64, 128, 256 and 512 by default. Drag and drop, hit "Download all", done.