Load app icon from xcassets

Question

I'd like to display the app icon inside my app. The icon is in the default assets catalog (Images.xcassets).

How do you load it? I tried the following and they all return nil:

image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"AppIcon"];
image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon"];
image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon-76"];
image = [UIImage imageNamed:@"icon-60"];

Other images in the assets catalog work as expected.

score 23 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 25 '13 at 10:28

23

By inspecting the bundle I found that the icon images were renamed as:

AppIcon76x76~ipad.png
AppIcon76x76@2x~ipad.png
AppIcon60x60@2x.png

And so on.

Thus, using [UIImage imageNamed:@"AppIcon76x76"] or similar works.

Is this documented somewhere?

answered Oct 25 '13 at 10:28

hpique

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There seems to be documentation here: https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/qa/qa1686/_index.html – Peter K. Nov 20 '14 at 15:55
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This is dangerous to do. Apple might change the naming convention and your app break in future. My suggestion is just to copy another icon in your image.xcasset separately. – GeneCode Dec 02 '16 at 02:54
is there a method to get the higher resolution images? – themenace Jul 13 '20 at 12:56

Ortwin Gentz · Answer 2 · 2015-09-29T09:19:32.680

18

I recommend retrieving the icon URL by inspecting the Info.plist since there's no guarantee how the Icon files are named:

NSDictionary *infoPlist = [[NSBundle mainBundle] infoDictionary];
NSString *icon = [[infoPlist valueForKeyPath:@"CFBundleIcons.CFBundlePrimaryIcon.CFBundleIconFiles"] lastObject];
imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:icon];

In this case we're fetching the last image URL of the CFBundleIconFiles array. It has the largest resolution. Change this if you need a smaller resolution.

edited Sep 29 '15 at 09:19

answered May 21 '14 at 18:26

Ortwin Gentz

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Interesting suggestion. It'd be nice to confirm if the `AppIcon` name is public API or not. – hpique May 21 '14 at 18:57
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In my case the icons are named differently. So I wouldn't purely rely on the name. – Ortwin Gentz May 21 '14 at 22:28
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why not simply this after having set "icon"? imageView.image = [UIImage imageNamed:icon]; – roberto.buratti Aug 05 '14 at 17:43
@roberto.buratti you're completely right, it's easier like that. In my special case I actually needed the URL but to create an image it's way easier like that. I've changed the answer. – Ortwin Gentz Aug 05 '14 at 20:08
Thanks, @Yossi, much better. I've edited the answer. – Ortwin Gentz Sep 29 '15 at 09:20

score 4 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 06 '18 at 12:02

Following Ortwin answer, a Swift 4 approach:

func getHighResolutionAppIconName() -> String? {
    guard let infoPlist = Bundle.main.infoDictionary else { return nil }
    guard let bundleIcons = infoPlist["CFBundleIcons"] as? NSDictionary else { return nil }
    guard let bundlePrimaryIcon = bundleIcons["CFBundlePrimaryIcon"] as? NSDictionary else { return nil }
    guard let bundleIconFiles = bundlePrimaryIcon["CFBundleIconFiles"] as? NSArray else { return nil }
    guard let appIcon = bundleIconFiles.lastObject as? String else { return nil }
    return appIcon
}

Then it can be used like:

let imageName = getHighResolutionAppIconName()
myImageView.image = UIImage(named: imageName)

Load app icon from xcassets

3 Answers3

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