Getting icons, drawables and resources for your Android project - x-droov

Let me guide you on how you will find free icons, drawables and any other resources for your Android project. If you think you'll use Google, you're far from the answer. As you grow with Android, you start keeping a large bank of useful icons and vectors for use in most of your projects.

Knowing where you will get them easily then becomes your own battle.

In this article, we will go through three methods that I always use when looking for different icons for use in my projects. Remember, no one owns a copyright for day-to-day icons because all of them are similar.

When looking for icons, get those that don't have backgrounds so that you can set their backgrounds in code. An example is the Android robot icon.

If you need to use icons with backgrounds then they should have backgrounds similar to the element they are residing in. One disadvantage of that is the difference in picture colors produced by different devices. The only way of skipping that huddle is using a color picker.

A color picker is an object that analyses a design, pixel by pixel, and shows each pixel's color values. You can get one with developer tools pro on playstore.

Once you have picked the icon's background color, you can then use it as the parent element's background color.

Methods of getting icons

1. Decompiling apps

Every app moves with all its icons. So if you decompile every app on your phone, you should have a very large bunch to chose from. Take a look at a list of icons from an app that I decompiled.

So you may be wondering how you are going to decompile apps. You can simply use Apktool found on telegram to decompile any app. And remember that you'll also get an additional service, a list of all java and xml files of that app so, you'll have so much to use.

If Apktoo doesn't fit you, there are other options like developer tools pro though it mainly brings xml designs.  I covered most of the decompiling in  my complete reverse engineering kit for android.

Killer tip

If you don't need to decompile many apps, you can download an offline icon editor like "iconic" on Google play and decompile it. Here you'll have thousands of icons to select from.

2. Editing icons

This is as simple as it sounds. Download an icon or drawable and gradient editor and do the work yourself. This gives birth to new icons that other guys will decompile out of your app.

This method is somehow hectic because you have to do the real work, but it pays off with unique features.

3. Using SVG

SVG (Scalable vector graphics) is a way of making all-devices icons. These icons won't be affected by scaling like the ones discussed before. You can edit SVG in an icon app like iconic or simple do it directly on code. 

If you need some guidance on how to code SVG, get some time and dedicate it to learning. This should be automatic because SVG is starting to dominate the design world.

If you work on those methods, you won't waste time thinking about where to find great icons for your project. Thanks for reading to the end. If you have any additions, let me know in the comments or you can get us on the contact us page .

AUTHOR

Emmy Jayson