Tuesday, April 10, 2012

Android status bar expects icons of size 25x25dp while guidelines recommend 32x32dp. Who is wrong?


According to android icon design guidelines ( here , see table #1), developer needs to provide status bar icons of next sizes:




Status Bar 24 x 24 px (LDPI) 32 x 32 px (MDPI) 48 x 48 px (HDPI)



While my measurements show that status bar always has 25 dp in height and expects icons of 25x25dp. This translates to these sizes:




Status Bar 19 x 19 px (LDPI) 25 x 25 px (MDPI) 38 x 38 px (HDPI)



Here is how I get those size:




25dp * 0.75 = 18.75 => 19px (LDPI)
25dp * 1 = 25 => 25px (MDPI)
25dp * 1.5 = 37.5 => 38px (HDPI)



I have confirmed calculated sizes on several Android phones and on emulators.



The question basically is: why guidelines use sizes different from what is really used by status bar?



P.S. I actually need to break guidelines due to precise pixel control requirements. And I just was confused by this state of affairs. So explanation of why this the way it is would really help me.


Source: Tips4all

1 comment:

  1. It just seems to be an error. (Note that as of 2010-12-04, they've also crossed their references to figures 4 and 5 on that page.)

    As Lex points out, they have the correct number further down, in the "Status bar icon" section.

    They also dictate a 2-pixel "safeframe" on all sides at 25x25 which the shape of your icon must fit within, though it seems that it is okay to have some aliasing-related stuff stick out, but only on the sides, for this type of icon. (Meaning that you really want to aim for 21x21 at that size.)

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