Wednesday, January 10, 2018

How would I add an app icon to my Universal Windows Project using Visual Studio 2017?

On smart phones Windows 10 Mobile, iPhone, Pixel Phones etc users immediately get to the app by clicking the app icon. It is their point of entry. Also when you install a new app, the new app appears on the app list.

For our HelloWorld Universal Windows Project, we can add the app icon (by replacing the default) using Visual Studio 2017 Community (or any other similar Visual Studio version).

If you are using the default app icon, when deployed your app would appear as shown here.


Lumia950AppIcon_0


It is pretty ugly (the icon of Hello World) and I am sure you want something that is distinctive of your development or company. You need to create an image to replace the "x" in your app.

I used Logo Foundry app that you can download from here. You can use any other software. It is just I found it the first time I searched and used it.

http://www.logomakerapp.com/index.html

I used it to create a simple logo that has the text 'Hodentek' on it as shown here:




Lumia950AppIcon_1

By using a photo application, I sliced it and created a 88x88 sized image recommended for the app icon in Visual Studio.

You should see this in the Package.appxmanifest file under Visual Assets | App Icon as shown.

I used the Browse(...) button for the recommended 88x88 size and retrieved to Visual Studio from the saved location.




Now from File menu click Save All. The build and run deploy the application to  Local Computer.

The application runs and the Hello World app icon appears as shown in Windows All programs as shown.






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