The most recent Alpha and Beta versions of the Facebook and Instagram apps on Android now support Android’s themed icons. This supports recent rumors that Meta was working on finally adding this functionality to its apps’ icons, years after it became available throughout the operating system.
Automatic theming, including themed icons, were introduced to Android with version 12 of the operating system. This feature extracted the dominant colors of your wallpaper and applied them throughout the interface, making for a more minimal and cohesive look.
Fortunately, this is now changing as both the Instagram and Facebook icons are now supporting automatic theming on Android in their Beta and Alpha apps, meaning that this will likely be rolled out to their stable versions soon. This was spotted by users currently using these versions and reported by Mishaal Rahman on X.
Image Credit – Omar Tosca on Threads (IG) | White_Eagle_ on Telegram (FB)
This is available right now in versions 307.0.0.0.42 (beta) of Instagram and 439.0.0.0.30 (alpha) of Facebook and signals a turning point to how Meta handles the implementation of new Android features. This was evident more recently by the limited rollout of a new Instagram layout for tablets, which can be tested now using a larger screen device, such as the Google Pixel Fold on Android 14 QPR1 Beta.
For those that enjoy having matching icons on their Android’s home screen, support for a matching themed icon for both of these applications could finally stop the issue of having to hide them inside a folder or pushing them to a secondary stream (if not hide them altogether). Hopefully, this feature makes it to the stable channels sooner rather than later, perhaps just in time for the next Android security update or the December Pixel Feature Drop.
