Android Icons Admin
Deterministic, local-first icon administration utility for Android 8.0 to 16 and Samsung One UI 8.5 that automates icon styling via badge-free widgets, silent shortcuts, and Theme Park export.
The Problem
Customizing app icons on Android has traditionally required root privileges, invasive third-party launchers, or shortcuts with ugly creator badges, along with double-container clipping artifacts on adaptive icons and a lack of transactional undo.
The Solution
A local-first Kotlin and Jetpack Compose application architected via Cleanroom TDD with a pure JVM core library (:core). Features permission-safe app discovery, clean adaptive layer extraction (foreground and monochrome), a deterministic 4-stage visual pipeline (normalization, Rec.709 tonal treatment, 4x4 supersampled superellipses, and Porter-Duff compositing), native 1x1 badge-free widgets, silent in-place shortcut sync, direct Samsung Theme Park export, and an atomic transactional undo store.
Key Learnings
- Strict Adherence to Android Security Boundaries: Unrooted apps cannot alter external APK packages or private launcher caches. AndroidIconsAdmin implements the three legitimate OS delivery routes: badge-free home widgets, silent in-place ShortcutManagerCompat sync, and MediaStore icon pack exports.
- Pure Kotlin (:core JVM) Domain Isolation: Decoupling the image processing engine from android.graphics.Bitmap into RgbaCanvas allows running full TDD unit test suites in sub-seconds on standard JVMs without emulators or Robolectric overhead.
- Double-Container Elimination on Adaptive Icons: By isolating the raw foreground layer from AdaptiveIconDrawable and calculating bounding boxes via alpha thresholding (alpha >= 16), undesirable nested framing and OEM clipping borders are completely eradicated.
- Native Samsung One UI 8.5 & Theme Park Integration: Direct 512x512 album generation in Pictures/AndroidIconsAdmin/ via MediaStore (zero permissions needed on Android 10+) combined with standard icon pack intent filters enables seamless system-wide One UI styling.
Deterministic Styling for Android & One UI
AndroidIconsAdmin brings the non-destructive, automated visual styling philosophy of Windows Icons Admin to Android:
- Zero Root, Zero Privilege Hacks: Operates strictly within the Android security model (SELinux and UID sandboxing), leveraging the three official routes for home screen customization: 1x1 badge-free widgets, background-updated pinned shortcuts, and icon pack export for Samsung One UI Theme Park and compatible launchers.
- Deterministic Graphics Pipeline (:core): Built in pure Kotlin and decoupled from Android platform APIs via
RgbaCanvas, featuring alpha-threshold bilinear normalization, Rec.709 tonal adjustments, and 4x4 subpixel supersampled containers. - Transactional Undo: Preserves original icon snapshots and persists every styling configuration in atomic JSON files with
.bakrecovery for safe, instantaneous rollbacks.