Open Radar

 
setAlternateIconName:completionHandler: should not inform the user

The new API in iOS 10.3 to change the app icon is great. But the fact that it will show an alert to the user each time the icon is changed ultimately reduces the use cases to very, very little ones. In fact, I can’t think of one where I want the user to be interrupted for something like this.

One use case for me would be e.g. on a timer app I am currently working on, I would love to update the app icon to illustrate to the user if a timer is currently running or not. That could be shown by a small play or pause symbol somewhere on the icon. But with the current behavior of the API that would mean that the user would see an alert view each time they start or stop a timer since the icon in that case needs to update.

There are other great use cases: Calendars could show the current day like the iOS calendar app (even though the current limit of different app icons prevents that, too).

If the user wouldn’t be informed about this, it would also be possible to call this method while the app is in background. So, again, e.g. for a timer: If the user starts the timer on another device, as soon as the CloudKit notification reaches a device, it could update the app icon in the background.

I am sure the number of possible use cases for this API would be tremendously larger if the user would not be informed about that change.

As all app icons are known at build time, bad user experiences can be prevented by an app review. The app review team could ensure that app icons don’t look totally different and that a user can still identify the app while alternate app icons are used.