★ Apple Should Eliminate the App Icon ‘Squircle Jail’
John Gruber argues that Apple's strict enforcement of the squircle shape for all app icons, enforced via the App Store review process, stifles icon design creativity and should be eliminated, noting that shape was once a key part of an icon's identity.
Background
- Apple has long required iOS app icons to be rendered inside a specific rounded-rectangle shape called the "squircle" (a blend of "square" and "circle"). Developers submit square icons, and Apple's system automatically masks them into this uniform shape on the Home Screen.
- John Gruber, author of Daring Fireball and a prominent Apple commentator, argues this mandate is unnecessarily restrictive. Before the squircle (pre-iOS 7, 2013), icons could have more varied shapes (e.g., the Phone app's rounded square, the Notes app's lined notepad shape), which made apps visually distinctive.
- Gruber believes that with modern iOS transparency effects and design maturity, Apple could trust developers to supply properly designed icons without forcing them all into the same cookie-cutter silhouette. The "squircle jail" refers to this forced uniformity, which he says strips icons of one of their most recognizable visual elements: their shape.