App icon size on Android 8.0 if targetSdkVersion >= 26

Question

My app has a square icon. When targetSdkVersion < 26 the app icon is shown correctly on all devices. But with targetSdkVersion >= 26 the app icon is shown inside a white circle on Android 8.0 devices. Is there a way to remove the white circle?

Answer 1

Per the Understanding Android Adaptive Icons blog post:

Indeed Google’s launcher will start placing icons of apps which target Android-O but do not supply an adaptive icon onto a background (scaling down their non-adaptive icon).

You must add an adaptive icon to your app once you target API 26. As adaptive icons change their outer shape based on what device they are running on, you cannot rely on your launcher icon always being a square.

The Designing Adaptive Icons blog post and Implementing Adaptive Icons blog post goes through more details on how you might take advantage of adaptive icon's separate background and foreground layers and how to implement an adaptive icon in your app. Android Studio also contains tooling to help via the New > Image Asset wizard as described in the Create app icons with Image Asset Studio article.