How do I use Arcticons

You'll need a launcher that supports custom icon packs to start with. Supported launchers are listed here:

You can also watch the two-minute tutorial on how to create a minimal home screen:

How do I apply Arcticons

There are two ways of applying Arcticons. In the app, you can press the “Apply” button. It will automatically detect the launcher you're using and apply the icons to it.

Alternatively, you can apply the icon pack in the Launcher's setting as well.

My launcher isn't included in the apply section

Not every launcher supports direct apply, and some of them can't be accessed directly from the app. You can apply Arcticons manually in the individual launcher settings.

Material You colors

To utilize Material You colors, you must own a device running Android 12* or higher. In addition to that, you also require a launcher that supports it.

How do I change my Material You color palette?

This is the same for most modern phones. Go to your system's settings → Wallpaper and style → Color palette. There can you find some different color options, and the option to use your wallpaper colors.

How can I replace icons with an alternate icon?

It depends on which launcher you're using. Not every launcher supports icon editing. With most launchers, you can edit an icon by tapping & holding the icon or double tapping it. Then click on the icon again. You will get a popup letting you choose a source, select Arcticons, scroll through the list or click on the open in-app button in the top-right corner.

Is there an Arcticons version that switches between dark & light mode?

Can you make a custom color option inside Arcticons?

No. due to the limitations of Android, we're unable to change the appearance of colors with a button click. However, some launchers allow for the user to override the color.

Does Arcticons offer autogenerated icons for missing ones?

Why are Read & Write External Storage permissions required?

It's used to write & read cache, and collect the icon request data.

Why is the Set Alarm permission required?

It's used to launch the clock app from the clock widgets.

Can't find what you're looking for?

Answers to common errors you may experience while using Arcticons.

Shuffled icons on an Oppo/ ColorOS phone

There's this weird bug that shuffles all your icons when using icon packs in combination with a ColorOS phone. Follow these steps to fix it:

1. Open Settings

2. Navigate to 'App management'

3. Navigate to 'App list', search and select 'System Launcher'

4. Select 'Storage usage'

5. Press on 'Clear cache'

Material You colors aren't updating

Manually selected icons don't follow the Material You color schemes

This is because most launchers create a static image from the icon when you select it. Sadly, there's nothing we can't do about it. So, we suggest letting the launcher developers know that you want this feature.

Icons appearing blank on Lineage 18

Calendar icons aren't working

Clock widget doesn't open clock app

This happens in old versions of the app, so make sure to update to the latest possible version.

Is there a difference between the Google Play version and others?

Yes. Due to Google's policies, we aren't allowed to have an explicit donate button that links to other sites. The releases from F-Droid, Accrescent & GitHub do have donate buttons.

Can't find what you're looking for?

GitHub guide

Uploading your work to GitHub might sound tricky, so here's a small guide

The Arcticons style

Icons have to look consistent, so we have a basic set of principles

Vector editor guides

You can create icons with the vector edit software of your choosing.

Contribute without designing or coding

You can even help out without any knowledge of designing or coding, check out how here.

Providing a free icon-pack for everyone can cost a lot of time and effort. So if you like our work, consider donating!

If you want a great way to get started contributing to this icon pack, here is a simple guide to get started using Inkscape!

Setting up Inkscape for icon creation

• In the navigation menu, go to File > Document Properties and set it to look like this: Note the Display Units set to px, the width and height set to 48px, the scale set to 1x, and the view box set to 48 by 48.

• Import a base icon or a template to start with. To do so, just go to File > Import and select the file you want. You can also drag and drop any file from your file manager of choice.

Start drawing

Inkscape comes with countless tools that can help you achieve basically everything you want, this can be an overwhelming number of things to learn. However, thanks to Arcticons simplicity, you only need to know a few tools to get started.

Using the bezier tool

If you have not changed the Inkscape's shortcuts, pressing the B key will let you create straight and curve lines (also called strokes), your mouse will change the icon to a little pencil. When using this tool, you can click from point to point, click and drag, or click, click and keep pressed. You can also press Control while dragging the mouse to stick to certain angles. To finish drawing, press Enter or join your last node to the first one. You can learn more about this tool on your own.

Creating shapes

Usually, you will want to make shapes instead of drawing everything by hand, if that's the case, you can use the E R and * to make Ellipses, rectangles and polygons. These have many options, like corner radius, changing the height or width, but beyond that, they can be a bit limited if you want to modify other aspects. You select it, and click Path > Object to Path. This will make it a normal stroke, and you will be able to work more freely on it.

Selecting and resizing objects

Occasionally, you will have many objects and strokes on top of each other, you can use Alt, Shift, and Control to modify the behavior of the selection tool, which is accessed by first pressing the S key.

Modifying existing objects

If you want to change the position of a node, you can use the N key to be able to edit the path of any object. Remember that if you aim to edit a shape, you have to convert it to an object. If you click once, you can also move the object, but by clicking twice you will be able to rotate the object. Again, using any of the modifier keys can change the behavior of this tool. Feel free to experiment.

Align and distribute paths and nodes

You can access this menu by pressing Control + Shift + A, and here you will see many options to align your objects in relation to the selected area, the full-page and other reference points.

Stroke styling

To make your strokes white, just select it, and go to the bottom color bar, hold the Shift key and click the white square. You can click on the X to make the color transparent in case you added a fill color accidentally. You should also make sure the stroke width stays at 1px. Use Control + Shift + F to view the Fill and Stroke menu and go to Stroke style and set the width to 1px. Keep in mind that if you resize and object, you might alter this value.

Exporting

To export your file, you just have to save by going to File > Save or just hitting Control + S.

Usually, Inkscape will add a lot of metadata that will get cleaned up by the maintainers, but if you want to get rid of it yourself, you can use a tool like SVGOMG. Or you can also do File > Save as and select Optimized SVG. There are many options you can enable/disable, and you can figure them out on your own., there are many options you can enable/disable, you can figure them out on your own.

Uploading

Follow the guide on the page below.

The Arcticons style

When creating icons, there are three key points to test your design to:

• Recognizable: There needs to be a clear link with the app, such as the word mark or logo.

• Minimalistic: Try using as fewer lines as possible, resulting in an easy-to-read icon.

• Elegant: Strive for the best-looking design you can make with the source material that you're working with. This is a bit of a personal preference, but make adjustments when necessary to keep your design clean.

Basic principles

• The size of your document should always be 48×48 px.

• Every line has a stroke thickness of 1 px and the color should always be #ffffff (white).

• Dots are 1,5×1,5 px and have a fill (and no stroke) that should also be white.

• The maximum size of your icon should fit into the template circle icon (43×43 px).

  • Square-like icons should fit into the square template (37×37 px).

  • Rectangular icons should fit into the rectangle templates (31×39 px).

• We have created our own font for Arcticons icons, all letters, numbers and other glyphs have to use it for consistency.

• All lines should have rounded caps & rounded corners.

• Try to keep icons as simple as possible, unnecessary lines make icons harder to read.

Exporting & making them work

Export your icons as SVG files.

Make sure to remove the reference image before exporting.

We don't accept icons that are rastered (PNG, WebP), are too cluttered or don't follow the basic principles.

Start creating

Uploading to GitHub.

With every release, you'll be able to request some missing icons that aren't included yet in Arcticons.

Regular requests

These requests are free for everyone. But have a little chance to get made because of the huge numbers of requests.

You can request icons with our in-app tool:

1. Open Arcticons

2. Press the symbol in the upper-left corner and select Icon Request

3. Choose the missing apps you wish to submit, it's also possible to select/deselect all missing apps

4. Press the plane symbol and choose the app in the pop-up menu to send the icon request

5. Now you can check the information that will be sent via email, and if everything looks fine, simply send the email, and it's done!

In case you accidentally close the app during the process, and want to clean the cache, there is an option named Clear Icon Request Data in Settings to do that.

Priority requests

Icon Pack Launcher compatibility

Supported Launchers

This is a list with launchers that support icon packs. Some launchers have more icon pack options than others, Arcticons Material You and Day & Night use newer Android features that are not supported by every launcher.

🟩 = Supported 🟥 = Unsupported ⚙️ = Reapply You need to reapply the icon pack in the launchers settings 🕜 = Delayed You will need to wait a bit ⚠️ = Old launcher Can't test because it's made for an older Android version, it's paywalled or something else ➖ = Untested

¹ AIO: In order for theme switching to work, you must enable the Monochrome icons option.

² Kvaesitso: Material You icons only work with the settings Themed icons and Enforce themed icons enabled.

Supported Apps

➖ = not yet tested/confirmed ✖️ = further testing not planned | Feedback wanted

The easiest way to start is to navigate to the template folder, and use those as a basis.

We've written some guides for different vector editors.

The basics

You can help the project without any knowledge of how to create icons or code. Each app and its icon corresponds to a line in a file called the appfilter.xml. These lines look like this:

The first part tells us which app we're working with:

com.donnnno.arcticons/com.donnnno.arcticons.activities.MainActivity

And the last part corresponds to the icons:

drawable="arcticons"/>

We can change the drawable name to the name we want, as long as there's an icon for it.

You can find the appfilter file located inside newicons/appfilter.xml

Add possible updates

Knowing the basics, we can add new entries to the appfilter.

On your local copy of Arcticons, open the appfilter.xml and search for the package name.

As you can see, the package name is in there, so we can paste our update by pressing the copy button, and pasting it above or below the existing entry.

Be sure to change the drawable name so that it's the same as the already existing one, in our case "browser".

Get the Appfilter code for your app

You want to update an appfilter code for an app installed on your phone and don't know how to get it.

Connect generic apps to existing icons

There are many apps that don't need their own icon because they can use a generic one. This gives Arcticons the ability to have support for even more apps.

• bible

• browser

• calendar

• camera

• chess

• cleaner

• clock

• contacts

• download

• gallery

• launcher

• keyboard

• kwgt

• mail

• mediaplayer

• messages

• music

• office

• phone

• quran

• sudoku

• vpn

• wallpaper

• weather

View the GitHub guide on how to add updates to the appfilter:

Give yourself an entry at the bottom of generated/contributors.xml to be included in the credits!

Just add this before the </resources> tag and edit the values

<contributor
    name="Contributor Name"
    contribution="Icon Creator."
    image="assets://contributors/yourImageName.png"
    link="https://linktoyourpage" />

For the name parameter enter your name or username

For the contribution parameter write what you have contributed (Icon Creator)

For the image you have multiple options

• leave it empty ""

• add a Link to your picture "https://linktoyourpicture"

• save your image in app/src/main/assets/contributors/ and link to it with "assets://contributors/'yourImageName.png'"

For the link parameter you can set the link to your GitHub profile or your website.

Building the app

Prerequisites: Android Studio and python3 installed on your device.

2. Change the versionCode and versionName in the /app/build.gradle file.

3. Open the repo in Android Studio. It will take a while to sync/load everything for the first time.

4. Choose the build flavor that you want

5. In the top bar on the right side, you will see a dropdown menu next to a green play button.
6. It's important to check for possible errors in your icons or appfilter entries, click on the dropdown menu and click on RunChecks. The Build tab at the bottom will show possible entries or icons to fix.

7. In the left sidebar, you will find the build variants button, choose the variant that you want
8. Click on the dropdown menu and click on Prepare New Release, and then the green play button. Wait for the process to finish.

9. Plug your phone and allow USB debugging in your phone's developer settings.

   1. Settings > About phone > Build number

10. Click on the dropdown menu and click on App, then the green play button to run the app on your phone!

    1. You can also generate an APK file in Android studio:

       • Toolbar > Build > Make project (the hammer icon)

Choosing your build flavors

The app is built as a debug version (com.donnnno.arcticons.debug) by default.

To choose another variant: Build Variants(on the left sidebar) > *Active Build Variant* > select from the menu.

So you have decided to contribute to Arcticons, using your Android device. Vector asset creator is one of the easiest ways to create simple vectors.

Getting started

• Set the canvas size to be 48dp by 48dp from the navigation pane

Begin drawing

• Add a reference image [navigation pane > background > image]

• Add some lines using the “Add stroke” tool from the toolbar at the top. e.g., [Add stroke > circle] You'll notice that the fill color is white, and the stroke color is black.

• Click the fill color tool and slide the fill-opacity slider all the way left, now the fill-color should be transparent.

• Click the stroke color tool [More > stroke color], and set it to any convenient color. e.g., for contrast.

• Similarly, set stroke width as per convenience.

• Keep adding strokes, and finish the drawing.

Exporting

• Remove the background image [navigation > background > clear]

• Click the “Select” tool and select the entire image.

• Click the “Resize” tool and pull the bottom-right corner to resize the icon to fit the canvas perfectly.

• From the navigation pane, select “Export” > SVG > turn off “include background color”

• The icon should be saved at Downloads/Vector Asset Creator/

This is an adoption of the Arcticons icons for Linux desktop managers like GNOME and KDE. Still in early stages, but does have a wide range of icons covered already.

How to gather the Appfilter code for an App installed on your Phone

After that you will be presented with a screen that looks like this.

Select the app that you would like to update the appfilter code. And then click the share button to share it with your preferred app. Or you could click the copy button to have the code copied to your clipboard.(This is helpful if you are asked to post the appfilter code in an Github Issue)

The in-app categories help people find the icons they need quicker. Some icons are categorized automatically with a prefix in the name like calendar_ or folder_, which works for icons like those. However, to give all names the prefix of games_ for example, would add an unwanted attribute to the name.

That's why certain categories are curated by hand:

• Games

• System apps

You can help by expanding these categories, it's even pretty easy to do, with no coding or creating skills required.

1. The categories are located inside generated/, there you will find games.xml & system.xml.

2. Click on one of the files and then on the edit button.

3. Add the names of the icons to the list (in alphabetical order).

   1. You can easily search for icons using our search site.

4. Click commit changes, add a small description and create the pull request.

After that you will be presented with a screen that looks like this.

Select the app that you would like to create Icons for. And then click the share button to share it with your preferred app. Or you could click the save button to save the zip file one your device.

Forking Arcticons

• In the top-right corner, click the Fork button. You'll get your very own clone of Arcticons! (You need a GitHub account for this).

• Download & Install GitHub Desktop, and login with your credentials

• Click on Add > Clone repository and select your Arcticons repo. This will create a folder with the Arcticons project.

Now you have your local Arcticons project. This means you can add icons and edit the appfilter.

Adding your icons

After having your icons created, you can export them as SVG files to the /newicons directory.

2. In the app, tap update existing.

3. Select Arcticons when asked to choose an icon pack.

4. Select the apps that you want to add.

5. Tap the share icon in the top-right corner and send it to yourself.

Now you can add these lines to the appfilter. You don't have to worry about putting everything in alphabetical order, just paste it somewhere. It gets sorted automatically with every release.

Uploading to GitHub

Now, when you open your GitHub Desktop window, you'll see a summary of the changes that you've made.

1. Give your commit a small summary.

2. Press the Current branch button, then create a new branch. Give it a name and press Create.

3. Publish your branch and commit the changes.

4. Now you can create a pull request by pressing the button. This will open the GitHub site again.

5. Create your pull request and you're done!

There you go, now all you have to do is wait for it to be merged into the app.

Alternatively, you can also do it all in your browser:

Uploading in Browser

• In the top-right corner, click the Fork button. You'll get your very own clone of Arcticons! (You need a GitHub account for this).

• Once in your fork, click "newicons" directory.

• Click "Add file" > Upload files > choose your files.

• Select your masterpiece(s) and commit changes (you can add a commit message if you want).

• There will be a dialog "… is 1 commit ahead of Arcticons-Team/Arcticons:main".

• Click "Contribute" > "Open pull request".

• Type the pull-request message (e.g., name of the icons).

• Click "create pull request".

There you go! Just wait for your changes to be merged into the app, and be happy, you are a contributor!

The IconRequest app is a tool to get appfilter codes and app icons extracted.

KDE

2. Then go to your System settings > Global theme > Icons there's an install from file button. Press it and navigate to the package you downloaded.

3. This should install two versions, the dark & light version. Choose the version that you want and enjoy the clean icons.

GNOME

In GNOME Shell, you can either use the Terminal and type the command gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.interface icon-theme <arcticons-light/arcticons-dark> or use the GNOME Tweaks GUI to change the icon theme to Arcticons Light or Dark. (To change the icons for Qt/KDE applications in GNOME as well, you need to open qt5ct and/or qt6ct and select the icon theme there)

Manual installation

You can install the icon theme by copying the arcticons-light and/or arcticons-dark folder into ~/.local/share/icons for a user-wide installation or into /usr/share/icons for a system-wide installation.

Looking to use Arcticons for business purposes and need tailored icons?

The icons from the Android project with a black rounded square added as a background.

Note: this was an experiment to provide PNGs for anyone who wants it, and doesn't include iOS-specific icons. If you are an iPhone user and are willing to contribute, please contact us!

A version specifically made for handhelds running the OnionOS system, like the Miyoo Mini Plus.

Forking Arcticons

• In the top-right corner, click the Fork button. You'll get your very own clone of Arcticons! (You need a GitHub account for this).

• Download & Install GitHub Desktop, and login with your credentials

• Click on Add > Clone repository and select your Arcticons repo. This will create a folder with the Arcticons project.

Now you have your local Arcticons project. This means you can add icons and edit the mappings.yaml.

Preparing the codebase

For generating the icons, you may need to do a git submodule update to pull the Arcticons repo, which will be pulled into the .arcticons folder.

Contributing your own icons

To contribute icons, which don't fit into the Android icon pack, you can place them into the icons_linux folder.

For matching the Arcticons style, you can follow the Android creation guide here:

You need to export the icon with black lines (stroke color #000) inside the icons_linux folder.

Mapping the icons

Under Linux, there is no single nomenclature for the app names, and so the icons are often needed in multiple places to account for different packaging systems etc.

For that, we have a mapping file called mapping.yaml, in which the icon names are mapped to different destinations.

Here is an example of a mapping:

browser:
  - apps/org.gnome.Epiphany
  - categories/applications-internet
  - categories/applications-network

The browser icon is mapped to three destinations. To add a new icon, just add the icon name as a new section and then the destination(s) as a list.

You can run uv run scripts/validate_mapping.py to validate the mapping file for correct syntax.

Finding the icons

Unfortunately, there are multiple locations for icons on Linux.

One way to find them (on KDE), is by opening the properties for the app.

1. The name should match with the name inside the mappings.yaml file.

2. The prefix to the name corresponds to the location of the app.

There is also an icon search script which helps to find mappings.

Run uv run scripts/icon_search.py <keyword> to find icons containing the keyword as well as desktop files. This searches the most common places. You can use the parameters -v to see from which files the mappings were found, --no-icons to only search desktop files and --no-desktop to only search icon folders.

Generating icons

Run uv run scripts/generate_icons.py -c generate-icons.toml to generate the icons.

Necessary information for a PR

New icons

• You can create a PR as soon as you place the new icons inside the icons_linux directory. If you don't want to edit the mapping file, you can just give the mapping in the PR description.

• You can edit the mapping file to include the mappings just at the bottom of the file. While generating the icons, the mapping file will be sorted automatically.

• If you like, you can also generate the icons on your machine to include them in the PR. Be aware that for this to work, you need to have the main Arcticons repo pulled as the submodule; additionally, you need to have Inkscape installed.

New mappings

• If adding the mapping an icon which doesn't exist yet in the mapping file, adding it to the bottom of the file is perfectly fine, it will be sorted automatically when generating the icons.

• If adding a mapping to an icon which is already in the file, you can add the mapping to the list. It will be sorted automatically when generating the icons.

• If you like, you can also generate the icons on your machine to include them in the PR. Be aware that for this to work, you need to have the main Arcticons repo as pulled as submodule; additionally, you need to have Inkscape installed.

Uploading to GitHub

Now, when you open your GitHub Desktop window, you'll see a summary of the changes that you've made.

1. Give your commit a small summary.

2. Press the Current branch button, then create a new branch. Give it a name and press Create.

3. Publish your branch and commit the changes.

4. Now you can create a pull request by pressing the button. This will open the GitHub site again.

5. Create your pull request and you're done!

There you go, now all you have to do is wait for it to be merged into the Linux theme.

Afterwards, you need to create a TOML file containing one or more sections like this:

• The section name is the destination folder.

• name is the name which will be put into the index.theme

• comment is the description which will be put into the index.theme

• inherits is the list of themes, which this theme will inherit (for icons which are not in this theme yet)

• overwrite describes whether the destination folder will be deleted or the generator will try to update the icons.

• archive describes whether an archive file of the destination folder should be created (Currently not working)

• src_color is the color of the source icons (the source icons used by Arcticons-Linux are #000)

• color is the color which should be applied to the icons. Possible values are all color recognized by CSS/SVG

• line_weight is the thickness of the strokes

• src_paths describes the paths where the generation script should look for icons, ordered by preference

To generate the icons, run uv run scripts/generate_icons.py -c <your_toml_file>

Looking to bundle your launcher with Arcticons?