Two icons, two specifications
A Google Play app has an icon in the store listing and an icon in the bundle (what the launcher shows). Play requires them to match visually, but the technical rules differ.
The hi-res listing icon
- 512 × 512 px, exactly.
- 32-bit PNG (alpha channel allowed), under 1 MB.
- Design it as a full-bleed square. Play applies its own rounded-corner mask (about 20% radius) and a subtle drop shadow to every icon on the store, so do not pre-round the corners or add your own shadow - you end up with a rounded square inside a rounded square.
- Keep key content inside roughly the central 80%; the corners are cut by Play's mask.
- No transparency in the background if you can avoid it - Play fills transparent areas with white on some surfaces, which rarely looks intended.
This is the icon the console's Store listing → App icon field wants. A 511-pixel or 24-bit upload is refused on the spot; a pre-rounded one is accepted and looks wrong.
Launcher icons inside the bundle
Since Android 8, launchers use adaptive icons: a 108 dp foreground layer over a background layer (colour or image), which the launcher masks into a circle, squircle, rounded square or teardrop and may animate. The builder assembles the adaptive icon from your upload and a background colour. Design rule: everything that matters must sit inside the central 66 dp circle of the 108 dp canvas - about 61% of the width - because that is all any mask guarantees to show. The mask preview in this tool shows your artwork inside that circle.
Older Android versions fall back to plain PNGs at fixed densities, which the ZIP carries in its mipmap-* folders:
| Density | Size | Where |
|---|---|---|
| mdpi | 48×48 | Very old / low-end devices |
| hdpi | 72×72 | - |
| xhdpi | 96×96 | Common budget phones |
| xxhdpi | 144×144 | Most mid-range phones |
| xxxhdpi | 192×192 | Flagship phones |
| Play listing | 512×512 | Store |
What gets icons rejected or listings flagged
- Mismatch between the store icon and the launcher icon. Same artwork, please.
- Someone else's logo or a Google/Android trademark - the impersonation policy. This includes using the Play Store triangle or the Android robot in your icon.
- Text-heavy icons - not a policy issue, but "TAP HERE", badges like "FREE" or "NEW", and ranking claims inside the icon are treated as metadata and can be flagged under the metadata policy.
- Screenshots of the website shrunk into the icon. Legal, but it fails the glance test at 48 px and signals a low-effort wrapper to a reviewer.
Preparing artwork that survives every mask
- Start at 1024×1024, PNG, from vector if possible.
- One strong shape or letterform; no thin strokes, no small text.
- Solid, brand-coloured background. Pull the hex from your logo with the palette extractor; the same colour becomes the adaptive icon background in the builder.
- Check on a dark launcher and a light one; check the round mask.
Export, then use the 512 in the Play Console and the original upload in the builder - the builder does the adaptive-icon assembly itself.