While there may be debate about whether iOS 19 will be a UI revolution or evolution, there does seem to be a consensus view on app icons. Namely, that they are likely to switch from squircles – squares with rounded corners – to circles.
Whether one looks better than the other is of course a matter of subjective judgement. But there is a small problem with circular icons …
If you look at current iPhone icons, they can be broadly divided into three:
- An underlying square design
- An underlying circular design
- No inherent shape
Let me show you what I mean by this. The Home and Wallet apps are a good example of an underlying square design – the graphics are square (or at least rectangular, tending to square), so can be as large as desired within the squircular space:
In contrast, some apps use circular graphics, with Safari and Spotify good examples. There’s again no real constraint on the size of a circular graphic within a squircle – we can see here that Apple has chosen to use most of the available space while Spotify uses a bit less of it:
Finally, there are graphics which simply fill the available space, and have no inherent shape. The Notes and Map icons are examples of these:
Top comment by Kal Madda
I think circle icons look dumb on iOS and macOS, and I think Apple will stick with squircle icons. I could possibly see them adding circle icons as a theming option, but I don’t think they’re going to make developers have to rework their app icons all over again right after they already took the time to change them to support dark mode in iOS 18. Besides, Circle icons don’t balance well with widgets. Apple places those circle icons in a different grid style on watchOS and visionOS, they don’t put them on a square grid.
Consensus? There is definitely not consensus that Apple will switch to circle icons. There are a couple people wishcasting it and making up mockups. There are zero direct leaks claiming the icons will be circular. And Prosser, who claims to have seen iOS 19, shows squircle icons in his mockups. Now Prosser could be wrong, or he could have seen an early in development version of iOS 19, but I think he’s likely correct on the app icons.
And another issue that isn’t mentioned in this article is that many apps use the squircle shape of the icon to represent a real world object. This is true even of many of Apple’s own icons. Some examples include Contacts, Reminders, Notes, Disc Utility, Final Cut Pro, Dictionary, and even Apple’s most recent apps: Apple Sports uses the squircle to represent a football field, and Invites uses the squircle to represent an envelope. Many third party app icons also use the shape to represent objects. These would all need changed.
If iOS 19 adopts circular icons, then clearly there’s no issue with circular app graphics – as now, these can use as little or as much of the available space as desired. Similarly, graphics which fill the space can adapt to any shape.
But for square graphics, they will have to shrink to fill the available space within a circular shape. This could make them harder to spot at a glance. We can see this with the Reddit and Slack icons in our mockup at the top of the piece, as well as in the original watchOS UI – long since abandoned by most Apple Watch owners.
Of course, I’m in no way suggesting this is a major usability barrier. Developers would be free to rework their icons into circles, or to fill the space. But I would argue that circular icons are just a little less space-efficient.
Do you have a preference for squircles over circles? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
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