WinPhone 8 AppBar icon size

Question

The guide for Windows Phone 8 app bars states that AppBar button icons should be 48x48px. It also says that a bunch of sample icons can be found in C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft SDKs\Windows Phone\v8.0\Icons.

But the images in there are 76x76px. And they work fine, at least on the emulator they do.

So what's the proper size?

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

17

So what's the proper size?

76x76, because then you support higher resolutions. If you use 48x48, it'll be scaled up for WXGA and 720p, rather than down (for WVGA), with the quality being slightly worse.

The factor is roughly 1.6, which is the same as for the Tile Sizes

And to prove the point, here's our application, using 76x76 application icons: Skype | Windows Phone Store

edited May 23 '17 at 12:24

Community

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answered Nov 10 '12 at 23:33

Claus Jørgensen

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Again - cite please. Also, the scale factor between resolutions is hardly 2. – Seva Alekseyev Nov 11 '12 at 00:52
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I work for Skype/Microsoft, and we're shipping a app using these resolutions :) – Claus Jørgensen Nov 11 '12 at 14:16
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Yes, but are you subject to Store review? Probably not, as you're a first party app. – Seva Alekseyev Nov 11 '12 at 14:39
Everybody is subject to Store certification, but some do have a "prioritized" access! – Pedro Lamas Nov 11 '12 at 20:51
It's a long story to explain, but in short, first party applications are the shipped with the OS. All other applications that you download via. the marketplace, are subject to the ingestion process, which will fail if your application does things that's not whitelisted. – Claus Jørgensen Nov 11 '12 at 20:53
Updated the answer with proof ;-) – Claus Jørgensen Nov 12 '12 at 08:13
Just for interest, the scale factor actually represents a 2.5x _muliplier_ on the volume of the icons, i.e. `48√2.5 ≈ 76` – Simon MᶜKenzie Jul 27 '15 at 01:00

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 11 '12 at 05:12

They are 48x48px as the people above have said, but the 76x76px ones you are seeing are for devices with a different screen size from that set by Visual Studio as default.

If you are looking for any additional icons do check out Templarian's open-sourced icon project http://modernuiicons.com/. The .zip includes light and dark themes icons as well as the initial Expressions Blend .design file and the .xaml coding of the icon.

score -1 · Answer 3 · answered Nov 10 '12 at 18:08

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They have to be a minimum of 48x48, you can have a bigger (square) size and it will scale down accordingly.

answered Nov 10 '12 at 18:08

Paras Wadehra

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That's not what the guide says. That seems to be the de-facto functionality, but a cite would be nice. – Seva Alekseyev Nov 10 '12 at 18:40

WinPhone 8 AppBar icon size

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