Dimensions for Android icons

I've been thinking about compiling a post to capture all my notes regarding dimensions for Android icons and here it is.....btw, I’m still researching dimensions of the splash screen icon – looks like this is tied a little tightly to the actual device dimensions, will blog about that once I find out.

Rule of Thumb: Given an MDPI, you need to increase the image size by 1.5 times to get an HDPI image, and shrink it by 0.75 times to get a LDPI image.

Launcher Icon: Represents the application on the home screen of the device, used to launch the app.

High-density: 60x60 px

Medium-density: 40x40 px

Low-density: 30x30 px

Detailed design guidelines for launcher icons: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_launcher.html

Application Icon: Icon that represents your application in the Android market.

512x512 px, high-resolution icon

Menu Icons: Icons that are used in menus of the application, like a home icon, settings icon, preferences icon etc.

High-density: 48x48 px

Medium-density: 32x32 px

Low-density: 24x24 px

Detailed info: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_menu.html

Tab Icons: Icons representing tabs in the application, separate images are created to represent selected and unselected states of the tab

High-density: 42x42 px

Medium-density: 28x28 px

Low-density: 22x22 px

Detailed info: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design_tab.html

Splash Icon: Icon that is displayed while the app is being loaded. This icon typically fills up the whole screen and has to match device dimensions.

High-density: 480x800 px

Medium-density: 320x480 px

Low-density: 240x400 px

Other useful links:

Tips for designers: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design.html#design-tips

Templates for creating icons in Adobe photoshop: http://developer.android.com/guide/practices/ui_guidelines/icon_design.html#templatespack

Changing emulator size

Sometimes the emulator looks a little large and you will not even be able to re-size it. One would imagine this to be possible but it's not possible.
To change the size of the emulator, go to
Run > Run Configurations > Target > Additional Emulator Command Line Options (scroll down to see this field) > Enter value like "-scale 0.8" to adjust the size