Icon packs have been a staple of the Android ecosystem for a number of years. While not natively supported in Google’s own Pixel Launcher, mostthird-party OEM skinsandlauncher appsallow you to easily swap between various app icon styles on the fly.
Over the years, developers have crafted a vibrant collection of unique icon packs, many of which are available to download directly from the Google Play Store. While not perfect – as there’s a perpetual cat-and-mouse game of adding in support for custom app icons – the majority of mainstream applications are cross-compatible with mostpopular icon packs.
Here are five of my personal favorite third-party icon packs available forAndroid. As with most icon packs, these particular apps are available via a one-time purchase fee, after which you will receive ongoing support for new icons as they become available.
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A delightfully cartoonish icon pack
Crayon Icon Pack
Crayon is a third-party icon pack for Android that fills your home screen with pastel-colored cartoon app icons, while also offering exclusive wallpapers.
Crayon is a charming Android icon pack with countless unique designs to choose from. Crayon icons are designed to exude personality with their cartoonish design, while employing pastel color tones for a subtle aesthetic pop. The icons themselves vary in shape, rather than adhering to a unified shape. That being said, sizing and proportions are consistent, making for a pleasant home screen aesthetic. Beyond app icons, Crayon also provides access to an exclusive collection of wallpapers, which are pulled from the cloud.
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A line-based design with glowing hues
GlowLine Icon Pack
GlowLine is a third-party Android icon pack designed with a unique line-based aesthetic, complete with a neon glow that looks stunning on OLED displays.
If you have an Android phone or tablet with an OLED display, then Glowline is the ideal icon pack to compliment your panel’s capabilities. With clean linework, Glowline endows each individual icon with a pleasing glow effect. When placed on a dark backdrop, the icons light up in a stunning fashion. Pairing this with the pure blacks of OLED adds even more to the effect, with each icon self-aluminating in a way that reminds me of Lite Brite.
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A cohesive aesthetic for fans of homogeneity
Borealis - Icon Pack
Borealis is a well-crafted third-party icon pack for Android that offers a colorful, cohesive set of app icons, with unthemed icon masking and more.
If you’re a fan of the consistency provided by a unified app icon shape, then Borealis is one of your best choices. Icons take on a rounded square aesthetic, with a shape that sits somewhere between Apple’s iOS icons and Samsung’s One UI ‘squircles.’ While slightly pricier than some of the other entries on this list, Borealis boosts a massive database of icons to choose from, along with automatic masking for those stubborn icons that don’t seem to want to conform to the overarching design language. The app also includes over forty-eight cloud-based wallpapers, and a Dynamic Calendar feature within supported launchers.
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4Retro Mode
Bring on the 8-bit gaming vibes
Retro Mode - Icon Pack (Neon)
Retro Mode (Neon) is a third-party icon pack for Android with a retro pixel art aesthetic, leaning into the 8-bit gaming era with its visuals.
I can’t get enough of pixel art, and Retro Mode is one of my all-time favorite Android icon packs for this exact reason. Taking inspiration from the 8-bit graphical era of video gaming, Retro Mode is filled with nostalgic charm from top to bottom. THe app also ships with twelve hand-picked wallpapers, six widgets, and a configuration system to combine and configure icon color gradients to match your preference.
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Layered, uniquely shaped icons that pop
ENIX Icon Pack
ENIX is a third-party Android icon pack that fills your home screen with attractive app icons of varying shapes, harkening back to the days when app icons weren’t uniform.
Enix is a visually pleasing icon pack that adds a dash of personality to vanilla Android app icons. While normalized in terms of sizing and proportion, the icons themselves take on a shapeless design, with a multi-layered and multi-toned design language that manages to maintain a sense of minimalism. Enix also comes with a selection of cloud-based wallpapers out of the box, and it even supports dynamically adjusting calendar icons (similar to the ones found in many stock OEM launchers).
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