Icon change for macOS Big Sur

[ardacebi]

macOS Big Sur brings macOS' system icons all with square corners, and some 3rd party developers including Adobe are converting their app icons to match up with these system icons.

Are there any plans for VS Code?

[jessety]

I second this. It's not like all 3rd party apps will adopt the new icon style overnight, but after a while the ones that haven't will start to stick out like a sore thumb.

[ardacebi]

@jessety The release of the developer betas are meant for changes like these. Until September/October, most likely most/all apps will already be using the new shape. And as you said, the ones that aren't will stick out.

Design-wise, this is a really bad practice. An example would be:

A similar situation will happen to all apps when Big Sur is released, this time with circle and freeform icons.

[rhoeltge]

The old macOS icon proposal might be well suited for this change (but in a square shape instead of the hexagon).

[austincondiff]

Perhaps something like one of these?

Light	Light Bordered	Light Overhang
Dark	Dark Bordered	Dark Overhang

This may be a separate issue but I think it might be nice to change the icon according to the theme you have installed. The light version would be used for light themes and the dark for dark themes. The color of the logo could be influenced by the primary color of the theme, and the background of the icon could be influenced by the background color of the theme.

EDIT
For those interested, I've done more icons. You can download them here.

[rhoeltge]

Well, I think adaption to the current theme might be way better suited for an extension. The blue logo simply is a part of VSCode’s branding and shouldn’t be changed by default. Other than that it would make it way harder to differentiate between the Stable version and the Insiders build, if you do use both with the same Theme. Also I’d say that it theoretically would make more sense to switch between the light and dark version depending on the OS setting, but even that would be unexpected behaviour as Apple’s own ions don’t do that as well.

But other than that, I sure do like the standard and the Bordered Icons. The Overhang versions seem unbalanced to me though.

[mohouyizme]

Check out this, I made some icons 2 weeks ago
https://github.com/mohouyizme/vscode-big-sur-icons

[ardacebi]

@mohouyizme These are nice, but a shadow for the new look would be better in my opinion. See @austincondiff's icons.

[mohouyizme]

@ardacebi yes I agree, I did that on purpose, I tried to keep it simple without affecting the identity of the logo, maybe adding a shadows version will be good.
I don’t think shadows are a standard thing or I’m wrong?

[austincondiff]

@mohouyizme shadows are a huge part of the neumorphism technique Apple is following in their Big Sur icons. It is however debatable whether or not every third-party icon needs to adopt it. I think it is always good to be consistent while adhering to brand standards.

[imkarthikk]

Check out this, I made some icons 2 weeks ago
https://github.com/mohouyizme/vscode-big-sur-icons

This is beautiful. Thanks mate.

[ardacebi]

With the macOS Public Beta getting out, this is getting more important. Do we have any updates regarding this?