Resolution For Mac App Icon

Due to the introduction of Macs with retina display, it is now recommended to provide high resolution versions of all graphics including app icons. To give your app an icon under Xcode 4.4 do the following: Create a folder IconName.iconset in Finder. In this folder place your icon as png files. You'll need the icon in sizes of 16px, 32px. If you create your sidebar icons in PDF format (recommended), OS X will automatically scale your icon for high-resolution display. You do not need to provide high-resolution versions. However, if you use PNG format for your icons, you will need to supply the following resources: 16x16. Click to download Configuration, Conf, Config, Configure, Customise, Customization, Development, Setting, Settings, Developer icon from Mac Apps Iconset by Rud3Boy.

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This article covers creating the images required for a Xamarin.Mac application's icon, bundling the images into a .icns file, and including the icon in the Xamarin.Mac project.

Overview

When working with C# and .NET in a Xamarin.Mac application, a developer has access to the same Image and Icon tools that a developer working in Objective-C and Xcode does.

A great Icon should convey the main purpose of a Xamarin.Mac app and hint experience the user should expect when using the app. This article covers all of the steps necessary to create the Image Assets required for an Icon, packaging those assets into a AppIcon.appiconset file and consuming that file in a Xamarin.Mac app.

Application icon

A great Icon should convey the main purpose of a Xamarin.Mac app and hint experience the user should expect when using an app. Every macOS app must include several sizes of its Icon for display in the Finder, Dock, Launchpad, and other locations throughout the computer.

Designing the icon

Apple suggests the following tips when designing an application's icon:

Consider giving the icon a realistic and unique shape.
If the macOS app has an iOS counterpart, don’t reuse the iOS app's icon.
Use universal imagery that people can easily recognize.
Strive for simplicity.
Use color and shadow sparingly to help the icon tell the app's story.
Avoid mixing actual text with greeked text or lines to suggest text.
Create an idealized version of the icon's subject rather than using an actual photo.
Avoid using macOS UI elements in the icons.
Don’t use replicas of Apple icons in the icons.

Please read the App Icon Gallery and Designing App Icons sections of Apple's OS X Human Interface Guidelines before designing a Xamarin.Mac app's icon.

Required image sizes and filenames

Like any other Image Resource that the developer is going to use in a Xamarin.Mac app, the app Icon needs to provided both a Standard and Retina Resolution version. Again, like any other image, use a @2x format when naming the Icon files:

Standard-Resolution - ImageName.filename-extension (Example: icon_512x512.png)
High-Resolution - ImageName@2x.filename-extension (Example: icon_512x512@2x.png)

For example, to supply the 512 x 512 version of the app's icon, the file would be named icon_512x512.png and icon_512x512@2x.png.

To ensure that the icon looks great in all the places that users see it, provide resources in the sizes listed below:

Filename	Size in Pixels
icon_512x512@2x.png	1024 x 1024
icon_512x512.png	512 x 512
icon_256x256@2x.png	512 x 512
icon_256x256.png	256 x 256
icon_128x128@2x.png	256 x 256
icon_128x128.png	128 x 128
icon_32x32@2x.png	64 x 64
icon_32x32.png	32 x 32
icon_16x16@2x.png	32 x 32
icon_16x16.png	16 x 16

For more information, see Apple's Provide High-Resolution Versions of All App Graphics Resources documentation.

Packaging the icon resources

With the icon designed and saved out to the required file sizes and names, Visual Studio for Mac makes it easy to assign them to the image assets for use in Xamarin.Mac.

Do the following:

In the Solution Pad, open Assets.xcassets > AppIcons.appiconset:
For each icon size required, click the icon and select the corresponding image file that were created above:
Save your changes.

Using the icon

Once the AppIcon.appiconset file has been built, it will need to assign it to the Xamarin.Mac project in Visual Studio for Mac.

Do the following:

Double-click the Info.plist in the Solution Pad to open the Project Options.
In the Mac OS X Application Target section and click the App Icons to select the AppIcon.appiconset file:
Save the changes.

When the app is run, the new icon will be displayed in the dock:

Summary

This article has taken a detailed look at working with Images required to create an macOS app Icon, packaging an Icon and including an Icon in a Xamarin.Mac project.

Extract Mac OS X App Icons

You can extract OS X app icons without using any third-party app. We can save app icons in different sizes and image formats like PNG, JPG, Tiff, etc using buit-in OS X app called Preview. While extracting app icon you can choose icon size from available list of sizes and then extract and save it as required file type. lets see how to save OS X app icons as hi-res image file.

Go directly to the Applications folder on OS X or right-click on the app icon from which you want to extract icons. Here we are going to extract Reminder app icon. First we need to go to the application location. So, Right-click on the app and select Options > Show in Finder.

Message Icon For Mac

This will take you to the location of the app. Here right-click on the app icon and select Get Info option.

In the app info window select the app icon and then click on Edit menu and select Copy option, this will copy and save the icon data in the Clipboard.

Hit cmd+space keys from keyboard and type Preview in the Spotlight, Select Preview app from search results and run it. In Preview app click the File menu and select “New from Clipboard” option.

A new preview window will open with all Reminder app icons in different sizes.

There are couple of ways to save app icon, You can directly click and drag an icon to save it on Desktop, but using this method icon will be saved as .tiff file.

If you want to save icon in other image formats you can select an icon from preview window and then click on File menu and then Save.

Give a name to the icon, select location to save it and then choose the icon file type (ICNS, JPEG,JPEG-2000, OpenEXR, PDF, PNG and TIFF), finally hit the Save button to export the icon.

Mac Icons Download

You can follow the same steps to extract and save any other app icon on Mac OS X.