Change Android app icons in APK?

Question

Is it possible to change the app icon in an APK in Android apps? I have a tablet running Android 2.2 and the icons are too low-res, so I want to replace them. I tried unzipping the APK, changing the icon and re-zipping, but it didn't work. Is there any way I can change the icon, even programmatically, to reflect the higher-res icon?

I think you want to change icons of third-party owned application, if it is right then i think its not possible. — Paresh Mayani, May 30 '11 at 05:05

Aleadam · Accepted Answer · 2011-05-30T05:59:58.877

APK files are actually nothing more than zip files. If you just want to replace images, then the easiest way is to open the apk file in 7-zip or winrar and replace the png files in there with your own. Just drag your new files to the 7-zip window.

Note that I said "open" and not "unzip". Once you decompress it, the signature will no longer be valid.

Another option is to use APKManager to do it. This way you do not need to install it in /system/app:

Download APK Manager
Put the .apk in "place-apk-here-for-modding"
Run the script.bat and extract it.
Drop the new PNG files in /res/drawable-?dpi overwriting the old ones.
Run ZIP .apk and select option 2 Regular APK
Sign the APK
Install

Are you sure the signature won't be invalid if some file is replaced(with out decompression) by 7-zip? — teejoe, Apr 19 '17 at 09:02

kefir500 · Answer 2 · 2019-01-21T07:49:48.843

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Summary

One the simplest ways is to change APK icons via user-friendly GUI tools:

APK Editor Studio – advanced but still easy-to-use APK editor.
APK Icon Editor – plain and simple APK editor.

Both tools are free and open-source (written in C++/Qt) with the Apktool used under the hood.

Features

Automatically pack, sign and optimize your APK.
Automatic conversion between PNG, BMP, JPEG, ICO, GIF, etc.
Available for Windows, macOS and Linux.

Disclaimer

I am the author of these tools.

edited Jan 21 '19 at 07:49

answered Jan 25 '14 at 18:54

kefir500

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Please, try to read this http://stackoverflow.com/help/deleted-answers, to get more understanding how to **not** answer. Namely: "Answers that do not fundamentally answer the question": **barely more than a link to an external site** – Radim Köhler Jan 25 '14 at 19:15
Please stop enforcing stackoverflow rules. – Stefan Reich Jun 15 '19 at 13:31
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@StefanReich This post directly answers the OP's question (which excludes the spamming nature) and contains an explicit disclaimer (which excludes the improper promotion). See [this meta post](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/a/260641/2004438) for more info. Also, the issues pointed out by Radim Köhler were fixed back in 2014. If you do not agree, you can always raise the moderator flag. – kefir500 Jun 15 '19 at 13:56

score 3 · Answer 3 · answered May 30 '11 at 06:12

If you want change android application icon programatically then you can set it into AndroidManifest.xml file, in the application tag by setting the android:icon property. But if you want to change the icon of third party applications then you cant.

score 2 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

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See this solution

edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

Community

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answered May 30 '11 at 05:08

Muhammad Zeeshan

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so basically it isnt possible? – au_889 May 30 '11 at 05:24

score 0 · Answer 5 · answered May 30 '11 at 05:11

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Please have a look at this one for designing icons for high, medium and low density phones: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_launcher.html

answered May 30 '11 at 05:11

Basil

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Change Android app icons in APK?

5 Answers5

Summary

Features

Disclaimer