Great question! Since your app supports only iOS 26 and later, you can leverage the latest streamlined APIs and Xcode 26 features to support alternate app icons more easily.
Here’s a step-by-step guide to add alternate app icons in Xcode 26 for iOS 26+:
1. Prepare Your Icon Assets
- Create your primary app icon and alternate app icons.
- Each icon set should follow the required sizes for iOS app icons (usually 1024x1024 and smaller variants are auto-generated).
- In your Assets.xcassets, create an AppIcon asset for your primary icon.
- Create additional app icon sets for your alternate icons:
- Right-click in the asset catalog → New App Icon → name it (e.g.,
AlternateIcon1).
2. Update Info.plist
In iOS 26+, alternate app icons are declared in the Info.plist under the new CFBundleIcons dictionary with the key CFBundleAlternateIcons.
The structure is like this:
<key>CFBundleIcons</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundlePrimaryIcon</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIconName</key>
<string>AppIcon</string> <!-- Your primary icon set name -->
</dict>
<key>CFBundleAlternateIcons</key>
<dict>
<key>AlternateIcon1</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIconName</key>
<string>AlternateIcon1</string> <!-- name of alternate icon set -->
<key>UIPrerenderedIcon</key>
<false/>
</dict>
<key>AlternateIcon2</key>
<dict>
<key>CFBundleIconName</key>
<string>AlternateIcon2</string>
<key>UIPrerenderedIcon</key>
<false/>
</dict>
</dict>
</dict>
- Replace
AlternateIcon1 and AlternateIcon2 with your actual alternate icon asset names.
3. Change the App Icon Programmatically
Use the new API from iOS 26:
if UIApplication.shared.supportsAlternateIcons {
UIApplication.shared.setAlternateIconName("AlternateIcon1") { error in
if let error = error {
print("Error setting alternate icon: \(error.localizedDescription)")
} else {
print("Alternate icon set successfully")
}
}
}
- To switch back to the primary icon, pass
nil:
UIApplication.shared.setAlternateIconName(nil)
4. User Interface (Optional)
You can add a UI in your app letting users pick the alternate icon, then call setAlternateIconName.
5. Build and Test
- Run your app on a device or simulator with iOS 26 or later.
- Switch icons via your app UI and confirm the icon updates on the home screen.
Summary
- Create alternate icon sets in your asset catalog.
- Declare them in
Info.plist under CFBundleIcons → CFBundleAlternateIcons. - Use
UIApplication.shared.setAlternateIconName(_:) API to switch icons. - Since you only support iOS 26+, no need for backwards compatibility hacks.
If you want, I can help you generate the exact Info.plist XML or Swift code snippet for your specific icon names. Just let me know!
