Home screen shortcuts now use adaptive icons on Android O

One of the best features tucked away in the Chrome browser for Android application is the ability to create shortcuts to your favorite websites as well as web apps and have them placed onto your home screen. With Android O, these shortcuts take advantage of the OS’s new adaptive icons feature and add a background layer to the website’s logo…

First reported on by Android Police, this change mainly has to do with the shortcut’s appearance. With previous versions of Android, Chrome shortcuts used the icon or favicon provided by the website. This meant that the shortcuts all looked different from one another, varied in size, and some not having a background at all (if it was made transparent by the site’s owner).

With Android O, there is a new adaptive icon feature that allows the user to determine the shape that they want all of their installed applications to use (even though it doesn’t always work).

Now, the shortcut that is made by Chrome still uses the icon from the website, but it’s placed on top of a white background in whatever shape the user chooses. Additionally, there is now a small Chrome icon placed on top of the shortcut so that it cannot be misidentified as an installed application.