This app brings themed icons to most of your apps on Android 13
Android 13has been out since August 2022, and it’s now available on quite a few ofthe greatest Android phonesout there. One of the more interesting features it brings to the table are themed icons. When implemented by developers, app icon colors on your home screen are pulled from your wallpaper, creating a uniform and beautiful look—that is, whenall of your favorite apps support themed icons. Thankfully, there is now a new solution that lets you easily give your most important apps themed icons, including dark theme and wallpaper switching support.
App developer Rushikesh Kamewarupdated his Pinned Shortcuts app to version 2.0, which is actually focused on something other than theming. It’s mainly concerned with adding custom shortcuts to any app you please, accessible by long-pressing the app in question. For example, you could add long-press shortcuts for Telegram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger to your Google Messages app on your home screen, giving you access to all of your messaging services without using an unsightly folder.
On top of this, Pinned Shortcuts has the ability to add a themed icon or even a custom icon from an icon pack to any app you please. This makes it possible to theme your phone even when your phone’s launcher doesn’t support this, like the Google Pixel Launcher.
In contrast to other solutions, icons created via Pinned Shortcuts act pretty much like you would expect them to. They automatically adjust to your phone’s light or dark theme, and they change colors when you switch wallpapers, just like a normal app does.
This is achieved because Pinned Shortcuts essentially creates a new app for you that dons the icon and the shortcuts you chose, acting as a shortcut to both the main app and those saved in the long-press menu. To do that, Pinned Shortcuts needs to install an extra helper application that is capable of creating APKs—it’s similar to how theLawnchair launcherneeds an extra app to provide you with the Google Discover feed.
The regular Netflix app vs. its Pinned Shortcuts variant
This strategy also comes with a small caveat that probably means you shouldn’t use it to themeallof your unthemed app icons. Since Pinned Shortcuts creates a new app with the icon and shortcuts of your choice, you’ll end up with tons of duplicate apps in your app drawer. On some phones, it’s possible to hide apps, but that’s not the case on Pixel phones. That’s why we would recommend you don’t theme all of your apps with this, and stick with the essentials only.
Pinned Shortcuts also isn’t able to turn all icons into good-looking themed icons, which serves as proof that Google can’t just automate this theming process for developers. Firefox, for example, would benefit greatly from gradients that would make its logo more recognizable. Other apps still use older icon templates and will just give you ugly single-color squares instead of proper icons.
Pinned Shortcuts doesn’t work well forallapps
All in all, Pinned Shortcuts is the app that gives you the best-looking themed icons, despite these caveats. The other solutions we tried before (from the same developer, in fact) have more glaring issues, such as forcing you to redo all of your custom themed icons when you change your wallpaper or your light and dark mode. On top of that, Pinned Shortcuts adds another ingenious layer to your home screen, making it possible to access many more apps at once without having to resort to folders or third-party launchers.
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