Google Pixel’s AI icons are a poor substitute for real personalization on Android
Google Pixel’s AI icons are a poor substitute for real personalization on Android
Publish Date: 2026-03-10 18:10:00
Source Domain: 9to5google.com
With this month’s rollout of Android 16 QPR3 and its associated Pixel Drop, anyone rocking one of Google’s growing collection of Pixels is finally getting access to something we’ve waited on for a long time: custom app icons. Unfortunately, using this feature is locked behind a basic set of generative AI tools, and compared to what you’ll find on other launchers — from both first and third-party developers — it’s just not good enough.
I’ve been trying out Google’s AI-generated icons on my Pixel 10a over the past week or so, and unfortunately in my eyes, the problems really start appearing right from the beginning of the process. After this update, you’ll find five custom icon styles in the Wallpaper & Style menu on your device: Scribbles, Cookies, Easel, Treasure, and Stardust. Selecting one allows you to lightly customize your color packs with a handful of pre-selected color options, but just like with Google’s genAI-based wallpaper creator, you’re working within some pretty strict guardrails. Cookies and Stardust are, unfortunately, completely locked to their pre-built colors.
Once you’ve selected your style and color, Google previews nine of your homescreen app icons, using a mix of first and third-party offerings to give you some sense of what this style looks like. Most of these worked pretty well on first go, especially on the first-party side. But in my limited testing, some of my most-used apps, including Apple Music, Pocket Casts, and Letterboxd, had fairly rough designs. It seems like any icon with predominantly circular icons really struggled in being properly generated in a recognizable fashion; Letterboxd, for example, often had two of the three circles in its icon disappear.
If you don’t like what’s been generated, tapping on an icon preview allows you to give feedback or regenerate the look. However, as is often the case with AI-generated art, its second and third attempts often either…
