Be a part of Project Redstone and submit your own Tile icons

14 Aug 2016 • Sniper_GER •

This article was migrated from medium.com for archival purposes and may be heavily outdated. Please keep that in mind!

If you want to be part of Project Redstone, the spiritual successor to the famous Dreamboard theme „Paragon" by EndFinity, bringing a Windows 10 Mobile experience to iPhones on iOS 9, you can now submit tile icons for your favorite apps! When creating tile icons, please keep the following things in mind:

  • Tiles will be available in 4 sizes: App List, Small, Medium and Wide (Large following soon)
  • You can set available Tile sizes in an app's Tile.plist
  • Tile icons require Retina (@2x) and Retina HD (@3x) resolutions (@1x is currently not required)
  • Tile icons should be created according to this guide: https://msdn.microsoft.com/windows/uwp/style/icons

If your tile icons fail to meet these requirements, you are allowed to resubmit them up to three times (meeting the requirements) until they will be rejected without any answer.

The Tile Property List

Every tile has its very own Property List, containing various keys like Tile Accent Color or Display name. The following is a preliminary documentation and is subject to change during development of Project Redstone.

  • tileDisplayName (String): Although this key currently has no use, it will be used for changing the Display Name of a tile. This would allow changing the name "Game Center" to "Xbox".
  • isFullsizeTile (Boolean): This allows a tile icon to be used as a fullsize tile. By default, tile icons in App List are displayed at 32px, which adds a certain padding to the icon. Setting this key to YES removes this padding.
  • tileAccentColor (String): This key sets the accent color of a specific tile using a HEX string (eg. #0078D7). If this key is not set, the global accent color will be used instead. This key also sets the Launch Screen background color unless the next key is set.
  • launchScreenAccentColor (String): This key explicitly sets the accent color of an app's Launch Screen. Doesn't require the previous key to be set. Look at Microsoft Edge as an example: You can set any global accent color, but Edge's Launch Screen is always blue.
  • avaliableTileSizes (Array): This key sets available sizes for a tile when pinning it to the Start Screen. There are 5 sizes in total: 0 (reserved for App List, cannot be set), 1 (Small), 2 (Medium), 3 (Wide) and 4 (Large). Only ship tile icons for the sizes you set in this key

Tile image sizes

Every tile size has it's own image size. Refer to this section if you need help with the actual image sizes. Size 0 (App List):

  • 32x32 for non-fullsize tiles (64x64 at 2x, 96x96 at 3x)
  • 50x50 for fullsize tiles (100x100 at 2x, 150x150 at 3x)

Size 1 (Small Tile):

  • 32x32 for non-fullsize tiles (64x64 at 2x, 96x96 at 3x)
  • 69x69 for fullsize-tiles (138x138 at 2x, 207x207 at 3x)

Size 2 (Medium Tile):

  • 48x48 for non-fullsize tiles (96x96 at 2x, 144x144 at 3x)
  • 138x138 for fullsize tiles (276x276 at 2x, 414x414 at 3x)

Size 3 (Wide Tile):

  • Non-fullsize tiles use Size 2 tile images
  • 276x138 for fullsize tiles (552x276 at 2x, 828x414 at 3x)

Size 4 (Large Tile)

  • Non-fullsize tile use Size 2 tile images
  • 276x276 for fullsize tiles (552x552 at 2x, 828x828 at 3x)

UPDATE: I totally forgot to add that there is another required size for Launch Screen Icons, which is 128x128, 256x256 and 384x384.

Reminder: Only ship tile images for the icon sizes you specify in the Tile.plist. Non-Retina resolutions are currently not required.

Have you read through all this? Good.

Seriously, the stuff above is very important. Not having read the text will probably get your submission rejected. (Man, I sound like someone from the App Store…)

Before sending your submission to me, please create a folder for every app you want to submit a tile for, named with the bundle ID of that particular app, remove any existing .DS_Store files and put them all in one ZIP file. Once done, send that ZIP file to submissions@festival.ml, where your submission will be reviewed. Please keep in mind that there is a human behind, so things might take a while.

Once your submission is processed, you will hear from me.

Have fun creating your tiles!

Sniper_GER