There are a tons of ways you can personalize your phone including wallpapers, messing up with the home-screen using widgets, themes if your phone supports and some more. But you can also change looks of the app icons by simply installing icon packs from the play store. Sometimes the manufacturers offer really ugly icons with their phones just to provide a unique look for their software and that’s exactly where these applications come in handy.
So, What’s an Icon Pack?
If you really never cared about customizing, chances are you never heard of icon packs. Icon packs are basically applications you can download from the store and these apps replace almost all your app icons installed on your phone. Also, icons packs require one additional thing to work with – launchers. You will need to install a custom launcher to apply an icon pack unless your phone allows it by default (Ex: phones running Cyanogen OS/CyanogenMod). But from where you should begin with? Check out these five best free icon packs
1. Sunshine Icon Pack
Sunshine icon pack is an awesome pack that follows Google’s material design guidelines resulting in some really attractive icons and contains 1660+ icons in total. Developer hasn’t messed with the original icons a lot but just refreshed with new curves and design. It also offers some wallpapers to match with the icons, provides an icon request tool and divides the icons in categories inside the app to make the search easier. It supports most of the launchers out there.
You won’t notice a lot of changes in the icons, for instance the play store looks exactly the same but the color is a bit faded to match the pack. If you like the stock look but still want to change, this is an excellent way to go and as it is free, there’s no harm in trying. Download Sunshine icon pack
2. Glim Icon Pack
Another great way to get a refreshed look on those material icons is the Glim icon pack. Icons in this pack aren’t exactly like the ones we saw in Sunshine, this time they have a long shadow along with vibrant colors making them look absolutely stunning if you have a high resolution display. While the free version satisfies most of the needs with 1500+ icons, there’s also a paid version that provides many more (3500+ actually).
Like the sunshine icon pack, this app also comes with an icon request tool and some really good looking material wallpapers. There’s also an active Google+ community where you can post about your experience or just want to get the developer to release some new icons. We think the free version offers quite enough but if you really want more, go with the paid version. Download Glim icon pack
3. Moonshine Icon Pack
With over a million downloads, this is probably the most popular icon pack in the play store. This app is so popular because as soon as Google unveiled the new material design that they were going to follow in Android 5.0, the developer released this icon pack to provide users a taste of the design pattern. The moonshine icon pack is nothing but icons that are completely based on the material design, just that they’re a little more flat and animated.
Initially, there were only 66 but now this app comes with 925+ icons, 28 unique wallpapers and it supports most launchers out there. However in recent update, this app faced a big change. Pedro Peguero Jr., the developer behind this has terminated development to work on other bigger things at his studio, Valiant Pixels. He will continue with just bug fixes, but has open-sourced the project so that it will live on through community updates. Perfect for those who are still on KitKat and lower Android version. Download Moonshine icon pack
4. Polycon Icon pack
Another beautiful icon pack offering great icons for free is Polycon. What makes Polycon different is that these icons are a bit compact and playful than others. It also follows Google’s material color palette so that you won’t have any trouble matching them up with other assets of your phone. It supports all the major launchers and comes with a bunch of wallpapers. The developer mentions that this app is in beta but we had no trouble while using it. Download Polycon icon pack
5. CandyCons Icon Pack
Want your phone’s icons to look like candies this holiday season? Get the candycons icon pack! As the name sounds, these icons look like little candies. In fact, the chrome browser app looks exactly like a yummy lollipop. However, right now the collection is small and not all app icons are included. There are 700+ icons and all major launchers are supported. There are some wallpapers included and an icon request tool is there for you. Download CandyCons icon pack
Honorable Mentions
There are tons of icon packs available in play store for you to try, so not every pack can be covered here. You can also try apps like “Orbis”, “Rondo” and “Min” that offer a really unique collection with small and white icons. So those were some of the best free icon packs as per us, do mention if we missed a great one or share your favorite pack in the comments section below.
