Pixel AI icons prove popular, but major element still missing

Rolling out last month, Google’s default launcher now lets users create custom AI-generated icon themes that can be applied to all home screen apps. Notably, my colleague Rita El Khoury absolutely loves the feature, noting that she uninstalled all other alternative launchers in response. But the question remains, how do our readers feel?

Well, we ran a poll on Rita’s feature to gauge interest in custom icon packs on Pixel phones across our community. After more than 2,300 votes, the results are in.

Well done, Google: The Pixel icons upgrade is a hit!

A massive ~84% of respondents on this poll had something positive to say about Pixel Launcher’s new icon feature. Within this group, however, there’s a near split down the middle.

Around 51.2% of these respondents are in absolute favor of the feature in its current state. They’ve nothing negative or critical to say. Given that Pixel users have been starved of icon-related customization options in the default launcher for years, this is certainly a welcome breath of fresh air.

As commenter laszlomajoros65 writes: “I just love it!”

That said, ~48% of voters in favor of the new Pixel Launcher icons feature believe that custom icon generation is a “good start,” but Google needs to introduce more options to make it genuinely useful and appealing.

To be fair, Google has introduced plenty of new toggles and switches to the launcher in recent months. Users can now hide At A Glance from the home screen. However, there is more that could be done regarding icon tweaks. Where is the support for third-party icon packs, for example?

Reader Kawshik Ahmed echoes this sentiment:

A better option for me would have been, let me use a custom icon pack of my choice from Play Store and only apply AI icons to the icons that don’t have custom icon by the Theme Pack.

It’s also worth noting that this generative AI icon feature only themes home screen icons — those in the app drawer will retain their default look, making it far less appealing for those who value a uniform aesthetic across their entire device.

Beyond the general positive sentiment, around 14.5% of respondents were not impressed with the feature.

Reader zoomzoomjohn, who is seemingly among them, writes:

Yet another half baked Google project. I’ll stick with my fully customizable Launcher thank you.

Notably, several users in the comments section of Rita’s article reported that this feature was not available on their devices or on their Android build. It’s possible that they like what they see, but they haven’t been able to try it yet.

I’ve used plenty of Android launchers, and it remains genuinely baffling why Google refuses to add third-party icon pack support to Pixel Launcher.

Perhaps we’ll see it in the future, but for now, you’ll have to settle for yet another AI-adjacent customization feature on Pixels. Judging by the poll results, this might not be such a bad thing.