Google introduced themed icons with Android 12, along with its new Material You design language, and the feature does what you would expect. It matches the app icons on your homescreen with the colors from your wallpaper, giving your favorite Android phone an even better look. This gives you a uniform, less busy look for your launcher.
The feature only worked for a handful of Google apps on Android 12. For Android 13, Google corrected this shortcoming. However, app developers still have to add support for their icons. That means that even when you turn on themed icons, it’s likely that not all of them follow your preferred styling. Still, a good selection of third-party apps supports the Material You feature. In this article, we show you all the supported apps we could find and share tips on what you can do about apps that don’t offer themed icons.
How to activate themed icons on Android
To get started with themed icons, you first need to know how to turn them on. The process differs slightly across manufacturers, and your phone must be updated to Android 13 to support the feature. For most phones, you can follow these instructions:
- Tap and hold an empty spot on your homescreen. A popup appears.
- Select the Wallpaper & style shortcut. A settings panel appears.
- Scroll to the bottom of the screen and turn on the Themed icons toggle.
- Go back home to see the themed icons in action.
You can also change the colors of the themed icons to an extent. You can change them by switching your wallpaper, with Android automatically selecting a dominant color. Alternatively, you can stick with your wallpaper and choose one of the 16 color schemes displayed at the top of the Wallpaper & style section.
All the themed icons we spotted so far
The biggest apps that received themed icon support are WhatsApp and Spotify. The messaging platform is ubiquitous around the world, and Spotify is synonymous with streaming music. It’s great that this essential part of many people’s homescreen already supports the new theming option. More big companies have also jumped on board already. Players like Slack, Reddit, Pinterest, and LinkedIn have added support.
- 1Password
- Aegis
- American Express
- Anchor by Spotify
- Babbel
- Backdrops
- Banking4
- Basecamp
- Battery Guru
- Beeper
- Bitwarden
- Brave
- Bumble
- Bundled Notes
- Cafe Buddy
- Cast My Radio
- Castro
- Citrix Workspace
- Citymapper
- CommuniqAI
- Credit Karma
- Cync by GE
- Dashane
- Daybridge
- Dolphin Emulator
- DRM Info
- Dropbox
- DuckDuckGo
- Dynamic Wallpaper
- eBay
- Ecosia
- Element Messenger
- ESPN
- Etsy
- Eurowings
- Exposure Calculator
- Fairtiq
- Fastmail
- Finanzblick
- Fitbit
- Fotmob
- Frameo
- Genius Scan
- Graphie
- Infinity for Reddit
- Instacard
- Inware
- iOSXPC Wallpapers
- Joey for Reddit
- Joyn
- LastPass Authenticator
- Lichess
- Mastodon
- MicCheck
- Microsoft Edge
- Monzo
- Mozilla Firefox
- Musicolet
- MyFitnessPal
- MyWallApp
- N26
- Nest
- NextCloud
- Nextdoor
- Offline Diary
- Opera
- Opera GX
- Pano Scrobbler for LastFM
- PhonePe
- Pinned Shortcuts
- Pix Wallpapers
- Pluma Browser
- Pocket Casts
- Podcast Addict
- Poweramp
- Public
- Relay for Reddit
- Repainter
- Retro Music Player
- Revolut
- Samsung Health
- Samsung Internet
- Samsung Smart Switch
- Shazam
- Shizuku
- Shortcut Maker
- Signal
- Skit
- Slack
- Sleep as Android
- Spotify
- Stats.fm
- Swappa
- Symfonium
- Sync for Reddit
- Talon for Twitter
- Telegram
- Telegram X
- TK-App
- Todoist
- Transit
- Trello
- Twitch
- UDisc
- URL Checker
- Vivaldi
- Vivino
- VLC
- vRGB
- vRGB Jack
- Wikipedia
- Wise
- Yandex Translate
- Yaste Kodi Remote
- Yazio
- YNAB
We left out Google apps and other preinstalled apps here, like those on Samsung phones. While some oddities, like Rewards and Google Authenticator, don’t support themed icons, most of its other apps have a monochrome look, as long as you have a Pixel phone. Some Google apps don’t have proper themed icons added to their APKs, leaving the Pixel Launcher to do this job.
How to create themed icons for any app on Android 13
There is a solution if your apps don’t offer themed icons. To get started, install the Pinned Shortcuts app from the Play Store. This application is meant for adding custom long-press shortcuts to any app icon on your homescreen, but it also supports creating themed icons. It is the most elegant solution we’ve found.
- Open the Pinned Shortcuts app and dismiss the launch dialog with Done.
- Tap the Pinned Extension download option toward the bottom.
- Select the Download anyway option in Chrome.
- Open the APK file that you downloaded.
- Chrome may warn you that it can’t install unknown apps. Tap the Settings option and toggle on Allow from this source.
- Tap Install in the dialog that shows up next, and then tap Open.
- You should now be back in the Pinned Shortcuts app. If not, open it again.
- Tap Create New near the top and select the app you want to create a themed icon for. In our example, we use Netflix.
- Tap Customize Icons, toggle on Themed Icon, and navigate back with the arrow in the top left.
- You can now optionally add apps or shortcuts that you would like to be able to open when you long-press the Netflix icon on your homescreen.
- Once you’re done, tap Install in the lower-right corner.
- Repeat steps 5 and 6 for Pinned Shortcuts and tap Done after installing your new app.
- When you navigate back to the homescreen, you’ll find your themed app on it. If not, you might have to find it in your app launcher first.
You must repeat these steps for all apps you want to theme.
Pinned Shortcuts offers a good workaround. The service can’t take an existing app on your phone and add a themed icon to it. Instead, it creates a new app that takes its spot on your homescreen. This new app is a shortcut that automatically launches the existing app that doesn’t have a themed icon, though you won’t notice any difference to the actual app on your homescreen.
One of the few downsides to this system is that it leaves you with a duplicate app icon in your app drawer, one with a themed icon and one without. On some launchers, you can get around this by hiding the original, unthemed app icon. The engine that separates the background from the foreground used by Pinned Shortcuts also fails for some complicated app icons, such as Notion or Libby. You can get around this problem for many apps by installing a minimal icon pack like Whicons and using that as the base for the themed icon.
Themed icons are here to stay
Whether you like themed icons or not, they’re here to stay. Slowly but surely, more apps are adding support. Many homescreens might look perfectly fine when you turn on themed icons, so give it a try. Meanwhile, themed icons aren’t the only great new thing in this Android version. Here are the top 13 underrated features from Android 13.
