How to Change the Color of Your Apps? This article describes your options for changing the color and icons of your Android apps.
The instructions in this article were formed using a Google Pixel running Android 12. Therefore, the options available to you will differ if you’re using a phone from a different company or one with an older operating system.
- Turn on Themed icons & pick a solid or wallpaper-based color.
- Access the options here: Settings > Wallpaper & style.
- A third-party application with icon packs provides the greatest flexibility.
How Do I Change the Color of My Apps on My Mobile?
By default, app icons on some Android mobiles, like the Pixel, are essentially unchangeable, both the color and the actual icon. Spotify, for example, is green and black, and there’s no straightforward way to change that.
There are, however, some issues where the app lets you modify the icon from a selection of options. Or, the app has closer ties to your phone’s settings than further apps. This implies that if you change the color setting on your phone, the app color and icon style will change, too.
If all else fails, third-party apps can take care of the whole procedure for you through icon packs. You can modify the app’s icon color and complete the icon graphic that way.
Here are the Google-approved options for adjusting the color of an app icon:
Use Themed Icons
One way to fast change app icon colors is to use themed icons. But there’s a hitch: Not every icon will change—only Google-provided ones like Chrome, YouTube, Camera, Phone, Messages, Play Store, Gmail, etc.
Navigate to Settings > Wallpaper & style > Themed icons and choose what you’d like to use.
The icon style you end up with depends on the colors employed in your wallpaper (see below) and if the Dark theme is on.
Turn on Wallpaper Colors
Themed icons function as-is, so you can turn it on and forget about it. Or, to work in a bit of customization, you can use the app colors through two sets of color options: Wallpaper colors and Basic colors.
For example, if you like those Google apps to be purple, you can pick that color from Settings > Wallpaper & style > Basic colors. If you like the app icon colors to be balanced against the wallpaper, open Settings > Wallpaper & style > Wallpaper colors and pick one of those color combinations (the combos you notice there change depending on the wallpaper you’re using).
Those color styles are also used in folder backgrounds, the lock screen, and other places. They change the color of Google’s app icons because they’ve included their apps as part of the set to which the color setting applies. They may extend the option to third-party developers in the future so that your other apps will change color too.
How Do You Change App Icons on Android?
Changing app colors is also possible by modifying the whole app icon. The only built-in way of doing that is to follow the directions above. The color palette you pick, the wallpaper you’re using, and whether the dark theme and themed icons options are on impact how some of your apps appear.
But what if you’d prefer to pick a different app icon, maybe one for a non-Google app? There aren’t icon packs in the phone’s settings that you can cycle through, nor is there an approved method to swap out one icon for one of your choosing.
However, the app developer will have an app icon customization option in the app’s settings in some rare cases. One model is the DuckDuckGo browser in the Google Play store. A screen named App Icon is in that app’s settings, which has several options. This app’s icon is determined by what you decide in its settings, not what your wallpaper color is or what other toggles you enable on your phone.
If the app you’re attempting to change the icon color for doesn’t have that level of customization, consider using a third-party tool. You might require a different Android launcher than the one that came with your phone for that to work.