Why the Themed Icons feature is still labeled as “Beta” on Pixel

We are curious to see why the Themed Icons feature is still labeled as “Beta” on Pixel. We get why it had the beta label in Android 12 since the list of themeable icons was hardcoded, but in Android 13, there’s a proper API and all. The feature’s also available to OEMs in Android 13, whereas it wasn’t in Android 12:

“There is a feature on Pixel names as themed Icon. Is it included in the three patches you have shared? How can OEMs implement that? No. Themed icons are in Beta and aren’t available in Android 12.”

Interestingly, it seems at least some OEMs got rid of the “Beta” label for Themed Icons. There’s no beta label for Themed Icons in ZenUI, for example. The Android docs also don’t refer to it as a beta feature. Thus we wonder if Google actually still sees Themed Icons as a Beta feature. The upcoming forced monochromatic icon theming is definitely worthy of the “beta” label, but it’s not even public yet.

While I’m on the subject of Themed Icons, here are two tidbits you might not have known:

  • The Android 13 CDD doesn’t require that the system launcher support themed icons, but it IS a GMS requirement to support themed icons.
  • The R.color values Android uses to tint monochromatic icons are as follows:
    • Dark mode: system_neutral1_800 & system_accent1_100 for background & foreground respectively
    • Light mode: system_accent1_100 & system_accent2_700 for background & foreground respectively

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