Monochrome launcher icon / Themed icon for Android app

Automatically apply the app icon color based on your wallpaper or selected color palette (Works on Android version 13 or higher)

In this article, I will discuss setting up the monochrome launcher icon for Android app.

In the modern icon system, the Android app basically has two layers,

1. Foreground Layer
2. Background Layer

In this example, I’m using Adobe XD to design a simple logo,

1. First, you have to open the Adobe XD software and select the custom size option,

2. The size of this icon and background will be 512 x 512 which is standard for the Android app

3. Remember that the monochrome icon can be a separate icon or it can be your original foreground icon of your app. To set a monochrome icon there is a couple of condition it should meet,

• The icon has to be simple with one color
• No drop shadow or something complex is applied

4. After designing the icon, you have to export it in PNG or SVG format

5. Then you have to go to the Android studio, and then select File > New > Image Asset

6. There you need to import your icon's foreground and background layer, import the icons, resize, and customize them based on your preferences.

7. After finishing up, build and run the application to make sure the launcher icon is applied or not.

8. After applying the icon successfully, you need to go to the ‘res’ folder and find these two XML files which are shown below.

9. Open this file and you can see there is foreground and background icon is already there, you have to just pass the monochrome icon value,

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<adaptive-icon xmlns:android="http://schemas.android.com/apk/res/android">
    <background android:drawable="@drawable/ic_launcher_background"/>
    <foreground android:drawable="@drawable/ic_launcher_foreground"/>
    <monochrome android:drawable="@drawable/ic_launcher_foreground"/>
</adaptive-icon>

10. Then you can make your icon monochrome, just like that

Finally, run your app, change the theme of your device, and test it. you can check my application from GitHub,

Quitly: https://github.com/BitMavrick/Quitly