Casey Liss6d ago
Accidental Tech Podcast

šŸ“± New member special! šŸ“±

ATP Tier List: Home Screen Icons
https://atp.fm/atp-tier-list-home-screen-icons

Ranking the app icons on our iPhone home screens, including built-in Apple apps, third-party apps, and ā€” somewhat awkwardly ā€” even our own.

Join now to listen! https://atp.fm/join

Accidental Tech Podcast: ATP Tier List: Home Screen Icons

Three nerds discussing tech, Apple, programming, and loosely related matters.

Mar 28 at 3:08amIvory for Mac
Show threadJanne Ojaniemi6d ago
@atpfm
Show threadChris Finazzo6d ago
@Janne_O @atpfm
Show threadColin Frame6d ago

@atpfm does no one else see the App Store icon as the letter ā€˜Aā€™ ?

ā€˜Aā€™ for App Store

Show threadJohn Siracusa6d ago
@cframe Yes, everyone does, I think.
Show threadNicholas Riley6d ago
@atpfm Pretty sure the bottom right corner of the Calendars 5 icon is the flag of Ukraine. (The previous version of the icon did have a page curl.)
Show threadLuke Ratta6d ago
@atpfm Itā€™s certainly disappointing that this tier list doesnā€™t have chapter artwork for each app icon like youā€™ve done in the past.
Show threadLuke Ratta6d ago
@atpfm Either Overcast was being buggy, or yā€™all pushed a fixed file. Either way, chapters are somehow working now, so I retract my complaint. Looking forward to listening to the rest of the episode.
Show threadJohn Siracusa6d ago
@lukeratta The chapter images have been in there from the start, FWIW.
Show threadtambourineman6d ago
@atpfm Iā€™d love an ATP Insider/Dev where you discuss your specialties. One episode per host. For example, @marcoarment on SQL schemas and shepherding Mac Minis. @caseyliss on SwiftUI and Docker magic. @siracusa on Unix and backend wizardry.
Show threadmvk6d ago
@atpfm Really fun episode! FYI the blue/yellow swoosh in Calendars 5 represents Ukraine pride and solidarity, and I believe was added to all of Readdleā€™s major apps around the start of the Russian invasion, as the company was founded by four Ukrainian developers.
Show threadmvk6d ago
@atpfm @siracusa This will not have gotten all of your needed icons, but many could have been extracted from web browser pages of the App Store in Safari or using one of my favorite shortcuts:
Show threadJohn Siracusa6d ago
@mvk I tried all the public App Store websites and APIs I could think of! I got some images from there, but most of the stuff they vended was not useful to me.
Show threadmvk6d ago
@atpfm Ok I literally have never noticed the text on the Mail App icon until this episode.
Show threadJohn Siracusa6d ago
@mvk Ah, the telltale truncated edges of an app icon extracted using one the promising but ultimately non-working techniques that I had to discard.
Show threadmvk6d ago
@siracusa I believe this is a consequence iOS 26 šŸ˜­. It didnā€™t used to do that.
Show threadJohn Siracusa6d ago
@mvk Tell me about itā€¦
Show threadShantini6d ago
@atpfm oh no
Show threadJosef Habr5d ago

@atpfm guysā€¦ have you never ever seen Support Ukraine ribbon before??? Itā€™s been only FOUR years since the brutal invasion by ruZZians.

šŸ’™šŸ’™šŸ’™ blue for sky
šŸ’›šŸ’›šŸ’› yellow for sunflower fields

I use great PDF editor from the same dev. I think you can opt for non-support icon.

Show threadMatthew Androus5d ago
@atpfm @siracusa Calendars 5 is made by Readdle, a Ukrainian company. Maybe a great homage to their country, but terrible for every icon. At least their email client Spark lets you opt out
Show threadMatthew Androus5d ago
@atpfm @marcoarment you missed my favorite thing about the Flighty icon, which is that in dark mode, the plane has little lights on its wingtips just like a real plane! Very clever!
Show threadMarco Arment5d ago
@mandrous @atpfm OMG thatā€™s incredible.
Show threadTorstein5d ago
@atpfm I believe the Calendar 5 ribbon corner of blue and yellow is in support of ukraine. the developer Readdle is Ukrainian. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Readdle
Readdle - Wikipedia

Show threadJon Mullins5d ago
@atpfm great episode. One thought I had during my verbal disagreement with the episode during my drive to work; why doesn't @siracusa add a tier list input to the member portal so we can see how we stack up against ATP as individuals and as a audience? Just a thought for member benefits.
Show threadTheEJJ šŸ‡ØšŸ‡¦5d ago
@atpfm @caseyliss @marcoarment @siracusa What would you rank the WordFlow icon? I HAVE to know!
Show threadJohn Siracusa5d ago
@TheEjj šŸ˜¬
Show threadTheEJJ šŸ‡ØšŸ‡¦5d ago
@siracusa does it help that the app is called WordFlow and itā€™s supposed to look equal parts word processor and flowing water?
Show threadJohn Siracusa5d ago
@TheEjj No, I get itā€¦
Show threadMike3d ago

@atpfm just finished the episode, and as a calendars5 user Iā€™d like to addā€¦ the blue/yellow in the corner is a Ukrainian flag. Readdleā€™s HQ is in Ukraine

They also removed it on the new app @siracusa

Show threadNate2d ago

@atpfm you sent me off on a mission. I'm with @marcoarment and never liked the new Google icons. I've always get them mixed up so started looking for ways to revert them.

Still a work in progress but I like the mid 2010s look more.

Show threadMarco Arment2d ago
@v600 @atpfm Your kid is making the same face I do when I look at their current official icons.
Show threadScott Jann2d ago

@atpfm my son (14) caught the discussion of the Phone.app icon with me, I asked him if he knew what the thing on the icon was:

ā€œa phoneā€
ā€œhave you seen one like that?ā€
ā€œI think, like at the museum, but just a rectangle wouldnā€™t look good on the iconā€
šŸ« 

Show threadRoadskater, Ph.D.2d ago
@zenwheel @atpfm He's notā€¦ wrong.
Show threadAva 2d ago

@zenwheel @siracusa @atpfm I meanā€¦ Iā€™m gen z and have a rotary telephone in my house right now, but even for me I brought a spare one in to class in elementary school for a lesson on antique technology bc nobody else (except the teacher) had seen one

Landline phones in general, but especially wired ones, arenā€™t very common anymore and are thus used as icons because theyā€™re *the* de facto icon for a telephone. Much like how floppy disks are the save icon, phone cameras make a shutter sound, etc. It used to be skeuomorphism, but at this point, esp for kids, thatā€™s just the icon.

Show threadScott Jann1d ago
@avakining oh yes, explaining pulse dialing to the kids was fun; into the 90s phone companies had a surcharge for tone dialing which my dad refused to pay so we always had a rotary phone growing up.
Show threadMieszko Ślusarczyk1d ago
@avakining @zenwheel @siracusa @atpfm I was born in the 80s, I havenā€™t seen these much in my life, last time was probably 20 years ago?
Show threadStuart McHattie šŸ‘ØšŸ¼ā€šŸ’»1d ago
@zenwheel pay phones are all but gone in the UK but thatā€™s where this shape of phone lives on in 2026. Not in peopleā€™s houses.
Show threadJanne Ojaniemi1d ago
@zenwheel @atpfm I got flashbacks to few years ago the time I was explaining VHS tapes to my teenage nieces. ā€œWhat do you mean ā€œrewindā€?ā€
Show threadMarina Epelman1d ago
@zenwheel @siracusa @atpfm In 2016, the Henry Ford museum had a display of the evolution of phone designā€¦
Show threadMatt King2d ago
@atpfm I always felt that the Messages app icon should be a blue bubble
Show threadMutesplash1d ago
@atpfm This episode highlights the mantra of "taste is not evenly distributed" by showing that even _within_ a single person, it varies wildly šŸ˜†