Hi - I am using the iOS 18 app icon template from Apple’s design resources. I created my light, dark and transparent icon sets, but when I upload to apple, it’s rejected because the app icon can’t be transparent or contain an alpha channel.
I’ve removed all backgrounds to let the system colors come through, but I cannot seem to find where the alpha or transparent setting is coming from. My icon is shapes / text no images and I am exporting as PNG files. Is there an export setting I’m missing?
Any insight would be appreciated! Happy to share my template files if needed.
One thing I would suggest checking is if you select the frame containing your icon, check the export preview. If you have, for example, a shadow applied to any element within the icon and part of that shadow falls outside of the boundary of the icon, then that can mean the resulting export would be slightly larger to accommodate that shadow.
A quick fix for that would be to select the frame with the icon in and check the Clip content checkbox in the Inspector.
Otherwise, if you’d be happy to link to or upload the document in question then I’d be happy to take a look for you.
Hi Keir - thanks for replying. I’m not using any shadows and my frame is 1024x1024. When you say export preview, is it the preview in the lower right corner of the app or is there a different window I’m missing?
That is the preview I was referring to yep!
So, the checkerboard you see there in the preview indicates transparent parts of the image.
If Apple’s requirement is that there is no transparency/alpha, then you will need to apply a background to the 1024 frame (which would be the background of the icon itself). iOS app icons don’t support transparent backgrounds so you should provide a square image with a solid background and iOS will mask the corners accordingly for you.
I hope this helps clarify but any more questions, just drop them here!
Oh I see! Thanks for that detail, let me add a background and try to upload again. What took me down this path is the Sketch template I downloaded from Apple’s resources has this note in it:
Thanks for following up!
Unfortunately, Apple’s documentation has all been updated for iOS 26 which isn’t a great deal of help when iOS 18 is still the publicly available version , but you can find the previous version on the Wayback Machine at least.
It’s been a while since I personally added anything to the App Store, but IIRC, in Xcode, you can provide assets for the various icon styles (Light Mode, Dark Mode, Tinted). I believe for Tinted, if you don’t provide one yourself, Apple does some magic to create a reasonable variant. We posted an article about creating icons for iOS 18 which also may provide some tips.
For these icons I believe transparency is supported, at least for the tinted variant.
You mentioned that you received the error when uploading it to Apple so I’m thinking that you were uploading the icon through App Store Connect? In that case, the icons uploaded there are used for the App Store rather than the Application itself so these would need you to include a background of some sort (ideally matching the default light mode iOS icon).
If that’s not the case, and if you’re still having problems, if you can clarify a little about where exactly you’re uploading it to then that would certainly help!
, but you can find the previous version on the 