Your Mac app sits in the Dock all day, right next to Apple's own apps. A homemade icon stands out there for the wrong reasons. I design one that belongs on macOS.
With Liquid Glass in macOS 26, Mac icons follow the same rounded square as iPhone and iPad. You give macOS square layers and the system cuts the shape.
An icon with its own outline, like a circle or a tilted object, gets placed on a background the system adds. So a classic Mac icon can end up looking boxed in. A new icon designed for the square fills it properly.
A 1024 × 1024 pixel square, masked to a rounded shape by macOS. The main shape stays centered so nothing gets clipped.
The old asset catalog needed an image for every Mac size. An Icon Composer file replaces that, and Xcode renders each size.
If your app supports earlier macOS versions, Xcode builds a similar-looking icon for them from the same file at build time.
SwiftUI or AppKit. Drag the .icon file into your Xcode project and make sure its name matches the App Icon field in your target's General settings. That's it.
Mac Catalyst. Your iPad app runs as a Mac app, and Apple suggests a macOS version of its icon. The same .icon file holds the iOS and macOS versions, so the iPad icon and the Mac icon stay one design.
Electron. Recent Electron Forge and electron-builder versions take a .icon file for macOS 26 and later. Electron Forge suggests a classic .icns file as well for older macOS. You get PNG and SVG sources alongside the .icon file.
macOS has the same four looks as iPhone and iPad. These are real macOS renders of one of my icons, exported straight from Icon Composer.
Light
Dark
Clear
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With Liquid Glass, macOS masks app icons to a rounded square. An icon with its own outline, like a circle or a cutout, gets placed on a background the system adds. A new icon designed as square layers fills the shape properly.
Design it as a 1024 × 1024 pixel square. With an Icon Composer .icon file, Xcode creates every size the Mac needs. The older asset catalog way needed a separate image for each size.
Yes. Recent versions of Electron Forge and electron-builder accept an Icon Composer .icon file for macOS 26 and later. For older macOS versions, Electron Forge suggests keeping an .icns file too. You also get PNG and SVG source files.
No. One .icon file holds the iPhone, iPad and Mac versions together. Apple asks for a consistent design across platforms, and Icon Composer lets me adjust the Mac version only where it needs it.
More answers in the main FAQ.