A tool to quickly generate snazzy iOS placeholder appicons!
If you’re an iOS developer like me, chances are that you also create tiny iOS app projects in Xcode all the time. Maybe it’s an idea you’d like to try out, a toy for experimenting with a new iOS feature, maybe it’s a micro-tool, maybe it’s the alpha version of the next App Store blockbuster.
Suddenly your iOS simulators and your phone has a whole bunch of apps with the placeholder icon. That’s not very nice. But – making an icon, just for this? You don’t have time for that. You’re not a designer. You don’t have Sketch. You just want something that looks ok for now.
Here’s a tool that quickly generates app icons from a big set of beautifully crafted icons that are already on your computer. Open a shell, cd to your project directory and type:
Grab the zip from the releases page on Github, unzip and move appicon-generator into /usr/local/bin (or some other place you like to keep your binaries).
Caveats
appicon-generator will look for an Assets.xcassets directory, in the directory you’re at or most one level down, and then generate an AppIcon.appiconset there, overwriting any existing data without asking. Commit your data if needed before using.
Obviously, don’t try to commit an app with an emoji as an icon to the App Store. They won’t like that.
Build instructions
To build the tool, use swift build. Make sure to have your xcode-select version to at least Xcode 10.0.
Framework
This repository also contains the app icon set generator code as a Swift Package Manager distributed framework, if you’d like to integrate it with other tools. Please see:
appicon-generator
A tool to quickly generate snazzy iOS placeholder appicons!
If you’re an iOS developer like me, chances are that you also create tiny iOS app projects in Xcode all the time. Maybe it’s an idea you’d like to try out, a toy for experimenting with a new iOS feature, maybe it’s a micro-tool, maybe it’s the alpha version of the next App Store blockbuster.
Suddenly your iOS simulators and your phone has a whole bunch of apps with the placeholder icon. That’s not very nice. But – making an icon, just for this? You don’t have time for that. You’re not a designer. You don’t have Sketch. You just want something that looks ok for now.
Here’s a tool that quickly generates app icons from a big set of beautifully crafted icons that are already on your computer. Open a shell,
cd
to your project directory and type:Now you have an elephant as an appicon. Nice.
Installation
Mint
Using the Mint package manager:
Manually
Grab the zip from the releases page on Github, unzip and move
appicon-generator
into/usr/local/bin
(or some other place you like to keep your binaries).Caveats
appicon-generator
will look for anAssets.xcassets
directory, in the directory you’re at or most one level down, and then generate anAppIcon.appiconset
there, overwriting any existing data without asking. Commit your data if needed before using.Build instructions
To build the tool, use
swift build
. Make sure to have yourxcode-select
version to at least Xcode 10.0.Framework
This repository also contains the app icon set generator code as a Swift Package Manager distributed framework, if you’d like to integrate it with other tools. Please see: