App icons are different shapes, sizes, and color schemes and follow different design guidelines. Samsung's icons look different than Google's icons, look different from Microsoft's icons, look different from every other developer's icons. Adaptive icons have sought to bring some order to this chaos, but with little luck. Thankfully, icon packs are here to pick up the slack. Icon packs are plentiful, colorful, and they come in every style under the sun. I love , but all of these packs are fantastic.
Goes with everything
Whicons
If you only download one icon pack, make it Whicons! This free icon pack is simple, its icons are easy to identify, and Whicons goes with just about every dark and vivid wallpaper you can imagine.
Little white lines
Lines
Outline packs may take different thicknesses and sizes, but Lines remains my favorite. It's been around for a really, really long time — just look at that Settings icon! — but Lines always comes through when I need a wireframe pack.
Glassy gleam
Emptos
This glassy icon pack is as rare as it is beautiful. Transparent squircles give a look of consistency to your app drawer and home screen, but the white logo shapes within are still instantly identifiable.
Teardrops of darkness
Oscuro
Hex black teardrop icons cut through bright and dim wallpapers alike, but the shaded stencil logos within them allow some wallpaper details to show through, as seen on the YouTube and AC logos.
Little black icon pack
Zwart
Zwart is the yin to Whicon's yang, its evil twin, and deliciously dark standout. When light icons can't keep their definition against vivid wallpapers, Zwart stands bold and firm.
Sophisticated cutouts
Nimbbi
This pack turns its simple monochromatic logos and thin black border into an elegant affair. Like onyx cuff links buttoning up your home screen, Nimbbi offers sharp contrast to vast landscapes and geometric wallpapers.
Going greyscale
Noctum
This classic pack is unique in both its shape and its particular shades of grayscale. Never quite black — only very, very dark grey — Noctum can be used quite well with black wallpapers, a feature I've taken advantage of in my Blank Panther theme.
Shadows and circles
Lux Dark
Circular icon packs are some of the most popular, but Lux Dark shines a diamond in the rough. The bright, gradient-steeped color accents blend well with dark and colorful themes quite well.
Keep it mellow
Mellow Dark
This pack tries to perfectly balance shadow and vivid color in flat Material icons that use repeating shape styles to evoke consistency in an app that isn't completely forced into one particular shape.
Can't fight the moonlight
Moonrise
Moonrise, meanwhile, tries to add as much depth to its Material icons; icons are steeped largely in shadowed grays with delicately chosen color pops. This pack features a lot of shadowing, shading, and angled light-play.
Docked and locked
Ombre
Ombre is one of my favorite "shaped" icon packs. The bottom dock/bar is mostly plain, but for fitting icons, it transforms! The colors here are vivid enough to work with dark themes, even with the dark icon accents.
Color on the lines
Outline Icons
Outline goes beyond the monotone of simple white to bring bright, bold colors to its neon-reminiscent icons. Being a technicolor pack, it's a little easier to lose some of the more muted detail shades in some wallpapers, but this pack is a gem that shines in dark wallpapers and app drawers
Pixel perfect
Pireo
Pireo keeps the layered look of the original 2016 Google Pixel's round icons alive and strong two years later. It favors white for its icon backgrounds a lot, but the small shadow keeps them distinguishable, even on pure white wallpapers.
Flat and round
Elun
Elun also emulates some of the 2016 Pixel's style, but this pack is flatter, slicker, and far, far more colorful. Soft grays and vivid accent colors help it avoid an abundance of white, so icons like YouTube and the Dialer stand out more.
Material magic
Urmun
Urmun is a pack built upon Material Design, one that emphasizes bold logos and sharp color palettes. Shadows add depth to this diversely-shaped, 4,300+ icon-sporting pack, and details are emphasized expertly.
Sweet and colorful
CandyCons
Taking more of a shine to bright sugary colors and simple shapes, CandyCons is a sweet icon pack to keep around. Plentiful, colorful alternate icons make for great theming around the holidays.
Hip to be square
Krix
These ever-so-slightly-rounded square icons offer a flat look and a wide color array. Based on Xiaomi's MIUI, this pack has over 3,000 icons and a uniquely blended style.
Touch of TouchWiz
Aspire UX S9
A lot of icon packs emulate the Samsung Experience/TouchWiz look, but none do it with quite the style of Aspire UX. This wireframe pack's more than willing to bulk up with original logos when the outline look doesn't work, and I'm grateful for their discretion there.
Basic beauty
Minimalist
Out of the darkness and into the light, Minimalist tends to favor square icons with its sun-faded palette and flat, minimal feel. While these icons are beautiful, it can take a moment to tell which apps are which.
Go retro
Retororika
Retrorika has grown in downloads and icons for years while maintaining a sepia-stained look that skews the palette in new and often fun ways. Like Lloyd's pink old-timey bathing suit? At least, I hope that's a bathing suit.
Magic rainbow rave
Unicorn
Unicorn very much matches the food craze that engulfed everything from cupcakes to donuts to Starbucks and beyond. Vivid pinks and purples contrast more muted blues and greens for a pack that's rave-ready, day or night.
All that glitters
Golden Icons
This beveled beauty of a pack is the little sister of Whicons and Zwart. While it lacks a golden mask to keep unthemed icons truly consistent, there are enough alternate icons to keep your app drawer golden.
BYOP: Build your own pack
Icon Pack Studio
If no icon pack can quite suit your tastes, don't give up hope — just make an icon pack yourself! Icon Pack Studio lets you pick the colors, textures, styles, stencils, and more and covers every app on your phone no matter how obscure.
Fill the gaps
Adapticons
If you only need to plug one or two holes in your app drawer — or simply want to make an icon pack where every single icon can be individually customized, colored, and shaped — Adapticons is your app! Just be prepared; this can take a little while to do one by one.
There are a lot of icon packs, and while I love and enjoy keeping a wide array of icon packs at my disposal, I do find myself coming back to — it really does go with everything! When Whicons doesn't quite fit a theme, usually does, and gives me icons that are perfectly color-matched to my theme's palette and covers every app in my drawer, popular or not.