iOS App Icon Sizes

Last updated October 5, 2026

• iOS
• iPadOS
• Xcode
• Reference

An iOS app icon is one design shown at up to ten different sizes. This guide lists every size Xcode knows about, explains where each one appears on the device, and covers when you can skip the list entirely and ship a single 1024×1024 image.

Points, scales and pixels

Apple specifies icon sizes in points, not pixels. A point is a layout unit that stays the same physical size across devices; the screen's scale factor decides how many pixels fill it. Current iPhones use a scale of @2x or @3x, and every iPad that runs a modern version of iPadOS uses @2x. So the 60-point Home Screen icon is drawn from a 120×120 pixel image on a @2x iPhone and a 180×180 pixel image on a @3x iPhone.

That is why the same icon appears in an asset catalog several times. Each slot is a combination of a point size, a scale and a device family (Xcode calls it an idiom), and each one maps to a specific place in the system.

The complete size table

These are the slots in an iOS AppIcon asset when you choose All Sizes in Xcode. Pixel size is simply points multiplied by scale.

Where each icon appears

• Home Screen (60pt on iPhone, 76pt on iPad, 83.5pt on iPad Pro) is the icon people tap to open your app. It is also what they see in the App Library and the app switcher.
• Spotlight (40pt) is used when your app shows up in search results after swiping down on the Home Screen.
• Settings (29pt) appears next to your app's name in the Settings app, if your app has a settings bundle or permissions to manage.
• Notifications (20pt) is the small icon shown alongside your notifications.
• App Store (1024px) is used on your product page and in search results on the store. Xcode labels this slot ios-marketing.

The small sizes matter more than they look. At 20 points, fine lines, small text and subtle gradients disappear. If your icon only reads well at 1024px, it will look like a smudge in Notification Center. Preview the smallest sizes before you commit to a design.

Single Size: one 1024px image

Since Xcode 14, an iOS app icon can be set to Single Size in the asset catalog's Attributes inspector. You supply one 1024×1024 image and Xcode generates every smaller size at build time. New projects use Single Size by default.

Single Size is the right choice for most apps. Choose All Sizes instead when you want to hand-tune the small renditions, for example by simplifying details or thickening strokes at 20 and 29 points so they stay crisp. A known caveat reported by developers is that single-size icons can fail App Store validation when the deployment target is older than iOS 12, so projects supporting very old versions should stick with All Sizes.

Layered icons and Icon Composer

Apple's current Human Interface Guidelines describe iOS, iPadOS and macOS icons as layered: a background layer plus one or more foreground layers, to which the system adds Liquid Glass effects such as specular highlights, refraction and translucency. You build these with Icon Composer, a tool included with Xcode, which also lets you mark up the default, dark and mono appearance variants and preview them before exporting the icon to your project. The layout canvas is still 1024×1024 pixels.

You can still provide a single flattened image; the HIG says so explicitly. Layers simply give you more control over how the system's effects interact with your artwork. For how the appearance variants work, see the guide to iOS dark and tinted icons.

What Contents.json does

Every asset in an Xcode asset catalog is a folder with a Contents.json file that tells Xcode which image fills which slot. For an app icon, the folder is called AppIcon.appiconset. If a file name in the JSON does not match a file in the folder, or a required slot is missing, Xcode shows a warning and the icon may not be included in the build.

A trimmed All Sizes example looks like this:

{
  "images" : [
    { "filename" : "Icon-60@2x.png", "idiom" : "iphone", "scale" : "2x", "size" : "60x60" },
    { "filename" : "Icon-60@3x.png", "idiom" : "iphone", "scale" : "3x", "size" : "60x60" },
    { "filename" : "Icon-76@2x.png", "idiom" : "ipad", "scale" : "2x", "size" : "76x76" },
    { "filename" : "Icon-83.5@2x.png", "idiom" : "ipad", "scale" : "2x", "size" : "83.5x83.5" },
    { "filename" : "Icon-1024.png", "idiom" : "ios-marketing", "scale" : "1x", "size" : "1024x1024" }
  ],
  "info" : { "author" : "xcode", "version" : 1 }
}

The Single Size version is much shorter:

{
  "images" : [
    { "filename" : "AppIcon.png", "idiom" : "universal", "platform" : "ios", "size" : "1024x1024" }
  ],
  "info" : { "author" : "xcode", "version" : 1 }
}

Note that sizes are written in points (60x60) with a separate scale, not in pixels. A common mistake when building an icon set by hand is to put the pixel size in the size field, which leaves the slot empty in Xcode.

Format rules that apply to every size

• Square, unmasked artwork. Do not round the corners yourself. The system applies its own mask, and pre-rounded corners leave visible edges or dark slivers.
• No transparency in the App Store icon. App Store Connect rejects a marketing icon that contains an alpha channel. Export a flat, opaque PNG. The app icon rejections guide covers this error in detail.
• Supported color spaces. Apple lists sRGB, Gray Gamma 2.2 and Display P3. Stick to sRGB unless you specifically need wide-gamut color.
• PNG for raster artwork. PNG is lossless, so edges and flat colors stay clean when Xcode scales the image.

Legacy sizes you can ignore

Older tutorials list sizes you will not find in a current Xcode project. The 57 and 72 point icons belong to the iOS 6 era, before the flat redesign introduced the 60 and 76 point sizes. The @1x iPad sizes were only needed for non-Retina iPads, which cannot run any recent version of iOS. If your deployment target is anything modern, you do not need any of them, and Xcode no longer offers slots for most of them.

A practical workflow

1. Design at 1024×1024 on a square canvas with a solid or gradient background.
2. Check the design at 40 and 60 pixels, the size of the notification icon, and simplify anything that turns to noise.
3. Export an opaque sRGB PNG.
4. Use Single Size in Xcode, or generate an All Sizes set if you need to support older targets or want pixel-perfect small sizes.

The app icon generator produces a complete AppIcon.appiconset with every size from the table above and a matching Contents.json, plus the Android set in the same download. For a one-page summary of both platforms, see the app icon guidelines.

More guides

• Android Adaptive Icons – Foreground and background layers, the 108dp canvas, the 66dp safe zone and Android 13 themed icons.
• PWA Manifest Icons – Which icons a web app manifest needs, how maskable icons work and how browsers choose between them.
• iOS Dark & Tinted Icons – How dark and tinted Home Screen icons work, what to supply for each appearance and common mistakes.
• macOS, watchOS & visionOS Icons – Icon shapes, sizes and layering for Apple platforms beyond iPhone and iPad.
• App Icon Rejections – The icon problems that get builds rejected on the App Store and Google Play, and how to avoid them.