Beginning iOS 5 Application Development

CUSTOMIZING YOUR APPLICATION ICON

As shown earlier, the application installed on your iPhone Simulator uses a default white image as an icon. You can, however, customize this icon. When designing icons for your iPhone and iPad applications, bear the following in mind:

• Design your icon to be 57X 57 pixels (for iPhone), 114X114 pixels (for iPhone high resolution), or 72X72 pixels (for iPad). For distribution through the App Store, you also need to prepare a 512X512 pixel image.
• Use square corners for your icon image because iPhone automatically rounds them. It also adds a glossy surface (you can turn off this feature, though).

NOTE Apple has published a description of the various images that you can use in your iPhone application. For details, see http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#documentation/userexperience/conceptual/mobilehig/IconsImages/IconsImages.html.

The following Try It Out demonstrates how to add an icon to your application so that the iPhone will use it instead of the default white image.

TRY IT OUT: Adding an Icon to the Application

1. To add an icon to your application, drag and drop an image (named as icon.png in this example) onto the Supporting Files folder of your project. You will be asked if you want to make a copy of the image you are dropping. Check this option so that a copy of the image will be stored in your project folder (see Figure 2-18).
2. Select ...