New app icons for Apple's Liquid Glass design language

[forcequitOS]

WWDC25 happened, so I got a little bored and decided I'd try to make a better and modernized for *OS 26 version of the UTM and UTM Remote icons. I truthfully am already fine with the icons as is, and I appreciate their simplicity, so I decided I'd carry them into the new generation of Apple design and use Apple's new Icon Composer tool to do so.

I made two different variants of the new icon, one similar to the current one, just with a corner radius consistent with the new icon design, and an alternative, "simplified" one that follows Apple's "Adopting Liquid Glass" article closer, particularly the point:

Consider a simplified design comprised of solid, filled, overlapping semi-transparent shapes.

Here's a comparison of the current macOS icon being used next to my two new icons

The new icons take advantage of having more depth and use a corner radius consistent with the app icon shape, which I believe looks cleaner and fits the new system visual style better.

Additionally, with the advent of clear and tinted icons, these are designed to look great in new rendering modes like Tinted Light and both the light and dark variants of Clear, effectively all thanks to Icon Composer doing the heavy lifting. Here's some of those variants.

These icons still retain the feeling of being a UTM app icon while achieving greater visual clarity, adding a new sense of depth, and adopting Apple's new design language.

I'd be happy to listen to feedback from any contributors of the project, if I get the go-ahead I'll attach the .icon files I exported from Icon Composer, the source SVGs, and the Pixelmator Pro document I created. I think these have a chance to look great on all our devices this September.

[osy]

I feel like the new design does not look distinctive enough at every possible size. Remember that macOS can display the icon at 16x16pts.

[forcequitOS]

Okay, I think I figured something out. Icon Composer has a value for translucency that effectively just gives foreground elements a gradient that becomes translucent
I can increase the opacity for the stripes and still change the translucency value, are any of these somewhat closer? I can additionally use the opacity values I used in #3 and combine that with a different translucency value, which is what I did in the icon on the far right.

[osy]

okay I think 1 and 2 are both very good

[forcequitOS]

I have both the 25% and 50% translucency icons here in .icon format alongside the source SVGs and PXD files I made in the process and exported PNGs from Icon Composer in this .zip file, using them in an Xcode project should just involve adding the .icon to the target and setting the App Icon value under App Icons and Launch Screen to the .icon's file name

UTM App Icon Source.zip

[osy]

Thank you!

[forcequitOS]

No problem! Glad to have helped