WP7 Application Icon and Application Tile Icon

published on: 4/13/2011 | Views: N/A | Tags: UI Images

by WindowsPhoneGeek

In this post I am going to talk about how to add custom Application Icon and Application Tile Icon to a sample Windows Phone 7 application.

What is Application Icon?

Basically the application icon is the image that displays for your application in the phone's application list.

According to the latest version of the Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements (Here's a direct link to the PDF file)the application icons should meet the following requirements:

 

• PNG file format
• 62 x 62 pixels

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is Application Tile Icon?

Basically an application tile is the image (of your application) that appears when users pins your application to the start screen. 

According to the latest version of the Windows Phone 7 Application Certification Requirements (Here's a direct link to the PDF file)the application icons should meet the following requirements:

 

• PNG file format
• 173x 173pixels

 

 

 

How to add a new Application Icon?

By default when you create a new Windows Phone 7 application a sample ApplicationIcon.png image is automatically generated.  In order to change this image at first we have to add our new image to our project and set its build action to Content.

NOTE: You can also take a look at our article: WP7 working with Images: Content vs Resource build action

After that you have two options either to use the VisualStudio Project Designer or WMAppManifest.xml file.

• Change Application Icon using the VisualStudio Project Designer

In order to change the application icon just follow the steps:

1. Right click on your project in VisualStudio and select Properties.

2. Go to Application Tab where you will find a section called  "Icon".

 

3.Just select from the combo your new icon:

• Change Application Icon using WMAppManifest.xml file

Windows Phone projects have an auto-generated XML manifest file that contains phone application metadata. The XML manifest file includes information such as IconPath, product IDs, versioning details, runtime types, paths to resources, phone capabilities, and other application-specific information.

So in order to change the application icon just go to WMAppManifest.xml and change the IconPath tag like for example:

<IconPath IsRelative="true" IsResource="false">MyAppIcon.png</IconPath>

NOTE: For any reference you can also take a look at MSDN documentation.

How to add a new Application Tile Icon?

By default when you create a new Windows Phone 7 application a sample Background.png image is automatically generated.  In order to change this image at first we have to add our new image to our project and set its build action to Content. After that you have two options either to use the VisualStudio Project Designer or WMAppManifest.xml file.

• Change Application Tile Icon using the VisualStudio Project Designer

Go to Application Tab(as explained in the previous point) where you will find a section called  "Background images".

• Change Application Icon using WMAppManifest.xml file In order to change the application tile icon just go to WMAppManifest.xml and change the BackgroundImageURI tag like for example:

<PrimaryToken TokenID="WP7SampleApp52Token" TaskName="_default">
  <TemplateType5>
    <BackgroundImageURI IsRelative="true" IsResource="false">AppTile.png</BackgroundImageURI>
    <Count>0</Count>
    <Title>WP7SampleApp52</Title>
  </TemplateType5>
</PrimaryToken>

That was all about how to change the Application Icon and Application Tile Icon of a Windows Phone 7 Application with new ones. Here is the source code:

I hope that the post was helpful.

You can also follow us on Twitter @winphonegeek

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