A good idea to give a personal and unique touch to the content of your smartphone is change app icons. This can be done in several ways: through the options provided by the phone itself (although in this sense there are differences between an iPhone and an Android device) or by using external tools. We are going to talk about all of this in this post.
Android phones offer us many more options to change the appearance of app icons than iOS devices. Despite that, it is also possible to make these types of cosmetic changes on the iPhone and iPad.
On Android devices
There is no native and natural way to change app icons on Android phones and tablets. However, there are some ways to do it more or less easily: using the different customization layer themes offered by some manufacturers or through Android launchers. We analyze both options below:
Using Personalization Layer Themes
This is probably the easiest method of changing app icons. Some Android phone manufacturers offer layers of customization who contemplate this possibility. These layers offer different aesthetic proposals for our mobiles (backgrounds, fonts, effects, etc.) which in many cases include a makeover of the application icons.
The list of manufacturers that offer this option is not too long. The most prominent are Xiaomi (MIUI), Huawei (EMUI) and Samsung (One UI). There are many of these layers and icons available for free, although most are paid.
Although the process may vary depending on the brand and model, in general it is always the same: download the icon packs and customization layers that we like and install them on our device.
Download and install Launchers
The launchers or launchers are the second main resource we have to change app icons on Android. He launcher is nothing other than the desktop environment of an Android device. In other words: it is the design that we find on the main screen of our mobile.
There is a subtle and important difference between the concepts "personalization layer" and "launcher": the latter is usually integrated into the former, although it can also be completely independent. The advantage of this is that it can be installed on any phone or tablet, regardless of which manufacturer they are.
A launcher can be installed like any other application, without the need to perform a root Nor nothing alike. Just go to Google Play and download it.
There are a wide variety of launchers on the Google app store, so choosing the right one can be tricky. The important thing is to know that not all of them are going to be useful to change the appearance of the icons of our applications. In order not to be mistaken, we have to carry out a search in Google Play with the term "icons" and in the results that appear go to the section of "Supported launchers".
Some of the most popular launchers on Google Play are Nova Launcher, Microsoft Launcher o Action Launcher (see links below), though the list is actually much longer:
In addition, it must be said that the launchers will not only allow us to change the icons of the applications and their visual appearance, but also their name. Finally, we must remember that a user can change the launcher as many times as he wants, thus continually renewing the aesthetics of his mobile.
On iOS devices
It is true that iOS offers much less customization options than Android, at least in what interests us in this post: changing the appearance of application icons. Despite this, there is a fairly simple and effective trick that we can use to achieve this: the app Shortcuts.
This is an app that is installed by default on the latest versions of the iPhone. A great tool that allows us to automate numerous tasks and also customize many aspects of our iPhone or iPad. If you do not have it installed on your device, you can download it from the Apple Store:
The process to follow to change app icons on an iPhone or iPad is as follows:
- First of all, we must download the icons that we want to use as images for our apps.
- Then we open the application "Shortcuts" and click on the symbol "+" to create a new one.
- select «Add action» and then we're going to «Open App» (to select the app where we want to make the change). Then we press the button "Next".
- In the newly created shortcut, we go to the icon of the three points at the top right of the screen and choose the option “Add to home screen”.
- Next, in the icon shown below, we choose "Select photo":
- Once we have selected the new downloaded image to change the app icon, press "Add".
This is how we will have changed the icon image of the app in question. This process must be run individually for each app, which is a bit slow and cumbersome, but it's the only way to do it on iOS.