Theme icons on Android are a throwback to the days of icon packs and sometimes chaotic tweaks. While fun and inviting, many apps still lack theme icon variants. This guide will walk you through creating themed icons for any app on Android in less than a minute.
Using an app called Shortcut Maker on the Google Play Store, you can create custom themed icons for any app in your app drawer. Depending on how crazy you want to get with it, you can grow through each app and change almost every aspect of those icons. In this guide, we’ll focus on creating a themed icon variant of app icons to match what Android 13’s theme icon switcher does to appropriate apps.
Related: These apps support Material You theme icons on Android 13
How to create themed icons
The first thing you need to do is install Shortcut Maker on your device. Go to the Google Play Store on your phone and search for the app. Once you find it, install it.
- Long tap on your home screen and select widgets.
- Scroll down and find Create shortcuts. Dragging Shortcut (default) to your home screen.
- Select app.
- Find an app for which you want to create a theme icon.
- Remark: In this example we use TIDAL.
- Tap Icon.
- Select Theme and choose the desired color palette.
- Press the minus button to reduce the icon size to about 90-95%.
- Remark: By default, the theme icon shortcuts are slightly larger than the average icon size.
- Press on the finch.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll have a sleek-looking theme icon ready to go, while looking great on your screen.
You can choose to create a shortcut from within the app itself, although shortcuts created through the app and not the widget will have a small shortcut icon next to it that detracts from the look you’re going for.
Shortcut Maker is a donation-based app that really completes your home screen, especially if you’ve been waiting for developers to create a pretty easy-to-make themed icon. The process is simple and can be done for just about any app you have.
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