The launcher draws the outline, not you
Since Android 8, the launcher decides an icon's silhouette. Pixel phones use a squircle, Samsung's One UI a rounded square, various third-party launchers a circle or a teardrop — one APK, a different shape on each. You supply the artwork; the system supplies the mask.
That is the adaptive icon: a background layer and a foreground layer on a 108 dp canvas, of which the launcher shows what its mask allows. The consequences are predictable and almost always discovered late, on someone else's phone.
72 dp of safety
Only the central 72 dp of the 108 dp canvas — about two thirds — is guaranteed visible. The outer ring lets launchers animate, apply parallax and mask to their own shape; anything there is at risk. The previewer measures this rather than eyeballing it: it renders your foreground at 108 dp, counts the inked pixels, and reports the fraction outside the safe circle. Under 2% is fine; over 12% means a circular mask visibly cuts the design.
What each mask punishes
| Mask | Seen on | Cuts |
|---|---|---|
| Circle | Many third-party launchers | Corner detail, hard-edged square logos |
| Squircle | Pixel launcher | Slightly less than a circle |
| Rounded square | Samsung One UI | Almost nothing — most forgiving |
| Teardrop | Some OEM launchers | One corner; centred designs are fine |
Practical rule: if it survives the circle, it survives all of them.
Designing for the mask
- Centre the mark, keep it to 60–70% of the canvas — it then reads under every shape.
- Let the background bleed — that layer should reach the edges; only the foreground needs restraint.
- No pre-rounded corners — a rounded rectangle in the foreground gives corners inside corners.
- No outer rings or borders — precisely what gets shaved off.
- Careful with text — a single letter can work; a word across the width loses its ends.
The sticker effect
An app shipping only a square legacy icon still runs on Android 8+, but the launcher cannot mask artwork with no layers. It centres the square inside a white shape instead — the small-icon-on-a-white-circle look that marks an app as years out of date. An adaptive foreground avoids it. The icon set generator exports a 432×432 foreground padded for the safe zone; generate there, check here.