What is the Best way of adding App icons and Launch image in iOS app?

Question

While adding App icons and Launch Images to iOS app, i have come across 3 different ways, and may be there would be more. But i need to know which one is best, easy and recommended way to add App icons and Launch images.
I know 3 different ways of Setting App Icon using

• Asset Catalog
• Info.plist( by specifying icon file names)
• By Specific Naming convention of Images

Actually everyone talking about some different way of setting App icon and Launch Images thats bit confusing, so i want to learn professional practice thats been followed in iOS. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

Using an Asset Catalog is bar far the easiest. And it is the default for any new iOS project you create in Xcode. The asset catalog will show you specific placeholders for all of the required icons based on the devices you support and the versions of iOS you support. You can also see what size each icon needs to be. It also eliminates any need to use an special naming convention and you don't need to make any manual updates to Info.plist.

You shouldn't be using launch images any more unless you need to support iOS 7 or earlier. Use a launch screen storyboard instead. In fact, if you wish to support the iPad Pro you must use a launch screen storyboard. (Not true any more as of Xcode 8).

If you choose to use launch images, using an asset catalog is again the best option for the same reasons stated above for the app icons.

Answer 2

Go with Asset Catalog. If you are going to use sprite kit images / Textures in the future , this will make your set of images fall in the pattern of power of 2 like 2,4,8,16,64,so on like 2048 . The idea is it will make it efficient as pre-cached. So I go with asset catalog and without further ado , go with asset catalog, as it hell easy for searching and deleting and updating and high resolution images. Moreover,it does not impose restrictions on the naming of your files.

Remember sizes for these icon size of type.

App Icon (iOS 5,6)

1x : 57x57

2x : 114x114

App Icon (iOS 7,8)

2x : 120x120

3x : 180x180

It's Asset Catalog , is what i would go for. If it is app icon, easy to see in one glance , all the icons for various sizes. With what I said, this habit of using asset catalog extends its usefulness to the domains of using images, textures in simple apps and if you later on switched to gaming apps too. Thanks .

Answer 3

According to Apple Doc https://developer.apple.com/library/ios/recipes/xcode_help-image_catalog-1.0/chapters/StoringAppIconsandLaunchImagesinanAssetCatalog.html

recommended way is to use asset catalogs.

Answer 4

Asset catalog is the newest way of setting assets like app icon and is Apple's recommended approach for new applications.

For the Launch screen, the new way is to use a storyboard so that you don't have to generate lots of launch images for every possible screen size, rather just provide a storyboard with a scene that uses auto layout to setup the launch screen.

The older ways of setting assets using the info.plist and naming conventions still work, but have been replace by the newer ways.

Answer 5

Asset catalog is the default way and also the easiest way. Because the asset catalog doesn't consider the name of image but only the size. So reduced the workload half the way.

App Icon (iOS 5,6)

1x : 57x57

2x : 114x114

App Icon (iOS 7,8)

2x : 120x120

3x : 180x180

Answer 6

I believe the modern, recommended way is to use asset catalogs. Some advantages:

1. It does not impose restrictions on the naming of your files.
2. It's easy to see at a glance (in Xcode) if you are missing any icon size.