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I have recently identified that in iOS 7 the clock icon is animating showing the real time.

New clock icon

Does anyone have a clue how to make your application icon animating? Or is that a feature of one single application?

VisioN
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    @downvoter Of course I can't demonstrate my code or whatever because I have no clue if this is possible or not. Be clever. – VisioN Oct 14 '13 at 13:45
  • http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19088977/can-we-make-animated-icons-for-ios-7-now-in-xcode – Mick MacCallum Oct 14 '13 at 13:48
  • @0x7fffffff Ha! I was sure there is a question about it but haven't found in the search. Anyways there is no solid answer in that thread, but thanks for noticing. – VisioN Oct 14 '13 at 13:50
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    Just pointing it out. It seems everyone knows that it can't be done without jailbreaking, but not how to actually do it using private API. – Mick MacCallum Oct 14 '13 at 13:52

5 Answers5

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The iOS SDK does not allow you to change/animate your apps icon. Apple's own apps are ofcourse an exception.

rckoenes
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    I was thinking if Apple has technical possibilities to do this maybe there is something even undocumented which we missed. – VisioN Oct 14 '13 at 13:47
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    Well if it is undocumented then how will you know about it? ;) maybe the jailbreak community has some new libraries but for AppStore Apps there is not way to do this. – rckoenes Oct 14 '13 at 13:54
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    In the same way how jailbreaks were written I guess `;)` – VisioN Oct 14 '13 at 13:55
  • Add the jailbreak tag to your question, that might make jailbreak developers find your question. – rckoenes Oct 14 '13 at 13:56
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iOS doesn't allow you to use animated app icon. You need to have a look at https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/AppIcons.html

Vineet Singh
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There is no open API to do such a thing. Even if it exists, it's undocumented, and Apple would reject your app on review.

Luke Taylor
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gleb.kudr
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This case is still in remain for Apple. Animated app icon for iOS is still unavailable/undocumented for us (developers).

Akbar Khan
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There is a way to do so. It's called "alternate icons".

API doc: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/uikit/uiapplication/2806815-supportsalternateicons

Example: https://medium.com/ios-os-x-development/dynamically-change-the-app-icon-7d4bece820d2

Alexey Volkov
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  • I guess this technique will change the icon from the app on demand and not on the background when the application is not running. – VisioN Aug 24 '20 at 07:45
  • @VisioN, probably you can use background tasks. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/backgroundtasks – Alexey Volkov Aug 25 '20 at 08:13