Better app icon

[milanvarady]

It would be nice to have a better app icon, that looks good and is consistent with liquid glass. I'm not a designer. If anyone is interested in creating a new app icon, please feel free to discuss here or reach out. We can completely redesign the icon, we don't have to keep the current one.

[stankiewiczmichal]

Maybe something like that? :)

Default:

Dark mode:

Mono/glass:

[whizabz]

Tried a few icons out 😊

I'm not sure how I can share the source files, but please let me know if you like any of them.

[milanvarady]

Hi @MStankiewiczOfficial and @whizabz. Thank you both for your icon submissions. To be honest, I wouldn't necessarily stick to the beer theme. Yes, Applite is a brew wrapper, but it's more like a thrid-party app store in my opinion. So I would emphasize this aspect somehow.

The beer tap icon looks the most unique to me, but again I don't feel it very closely related to Applite.

Again, thank you very much for the designs. I might consider them. And sorry for the late reply.

[whizabz]

Thanks for your reply. This is my first time ever trying to help a FOSS app with my design skills, so I'm just excited to see a response.😊

I'll see if I can come up with some concepts around Applite being "more like a thrid-party app store". If I do, I'll share them here.

Do let me know if I can help in any other way, would love to whatever I can!

[milanvarady]

Reviving this now that 1.4 is out, with a clearer brief. My February reply said what
not to do (the beer theme) without saying what to aim for.

What Applite is

A native macOS app store for software that isn't on the App Store, backed by Homebrew Cask.

Homebrew is the engine, not the product. Most users won't know or care that it's there.
As of 1.4 Applite installs and manages its own copy in the background, and you never see a
Terminal. So the icon should say app store, not package manager.

Things to avoid, and why:

• Beer, taps, kegs, hops. It's a Homebrew pun our users don't share. Someone installing
  Spotify doesn't know what Homebrew is.
• Terminals, prompts, brackets, monospace. The whole point of 1.4 was removing the
  terminal from the experience. An icon that suggests one works against that.
• Boxes, crates, packages. Reads as "package manager" — closer, but still the plumbing
  rather than the thing itself.

Directions that feel right:

• Something about discovery or choice — a collection, a shelf, a grid of apps.
• Something about being the other store — the place for what the App Store doesn't carry.
  Distinct from Apple's blue "A" though; we don't want to look like a knockoff, and we need
  to be tellable apart from it in the Dock at a glance.
• An abstract mark is fine. It doesn't have to be literal.

Nothing about the current icon is sacred, not the letterform, not the violet-to-pink
gradient. Feel free to start from scratch.

Technical notes for macOS 26

The icon is built in Icon Composer (Applite/AppIcon.icon), so what's most useful is
layered artwork, ideally SVG, one file per layer. I can compose it. A flat 1024×1024
PNG is much harder to work with, since the system needs the layers to build
specular effects.

• Don't draw the rounded-square container, a drop shadow, or glass/gloss yourself. macOS
  applies all of that. Design the mark, on transparent background, inside the canvas.
• It has to hold up in light, dark, clear and tinted appearances, and in monochrome.
  Shapes carry the icon; colour can't be doing the work alone.
• Keep it simple and bold. It gets rendered at 16pt in menus and lists. Thin strokes and
  fine detail disappear.

Contributing

Applite is MIT licensed. If you'd like your icon used, just confirm in a comment that
you're happy for it to ship under that license with credit. I'll add you to the README.
Happy to iterate here in the thread, and no obligation to finish anything you start.