App Center, the Flutter-based substitution for the Ubuntu Software application, has seen a revamped application icon in the most recent Ubuntu 24.04 daily builds.
The App Center has undergone more than one icon alteration in the past months.
A few months ago, an updated version of the software installation frontend was released and it accidentally switched the complete colour, 3D Yaru icon for a flat, 2D, pure orange icon with see-through features. Despite the issue being rectified in a subsequent update, some users claim to still be seeing the ‘incorrect icon’.
The App Center icon has once again been transformed – but this time, the modification was entirely planned:
The new App Center icon isn’t hugely different. It’s still an orange shopping bag. But the bag itself is taller, and the right stalk of the “A” in the middle of the icon has more of a shadowed/folded paper effect than the one it replaces.
Canonical’s design team committed the new icon without adding any details. No rationale behind updating the icon, how it’s better, or what is wrong with the existing Yaru icon. Not that it matters – unlike the 2D glyph accidentally pushed out, this replacement doesn’t look out of place.
I don’t expect most people will notice a difference.
For fun, here’s how the icons for the Ubuntu Software/App Center have evolved over the years (of course, they’ve not all been the same underlying app, but regardless of name, toolkit, etc the app has served the same purpose):
An evolution in shopping bag artistry
If you’re using Ubuntu 24.04 daily builds then you may or may not have this icon already. If you don’t, you could run sudo snap refresh to see if the updated snap-store is waiting — I only have see this new icon on 1 of my 3 24.04 installs (1 has the “accidental” icon, and 1 has the old Yaru icon).
What do you think of it? Let me know!