Why does the Flathub website display all app icons downscaled to 128x128?

[nfroggy]

I’m sorry if this has already been asked (I searched and couldn’t find anything), or if it’s documented somewhere I haven’t found.

Flathub requires developers to make high-resolution icons. The requirements say that an app must either have an SVG icon or at least a 256x256 PNG icon. I’m very supportive of this. High-DPI displays are becoming very common and it’s important to write software that looks good on them. However, when I look at app pages on the Flathub site, they’re all downscaled to 128x128 rather than the nice high-res icons that the authors created. This means that they all look fuzzy when viewed on a high-DPI display, especially the blown-up icons for featured apps. I attached a screenshot from my computer so you can see what I mean.

I was wondering if there was a reason why all the icons are downscaled to 128x128, or if Flathub had any plans to display higher resolution app icons in the future.

[bbhtt]

See App icons are blurry with 200% scaling · Issue #3176 · flathub-infra/website · GitHub which blocks using @2 icons

Appstream at most gives us 128x128@2 icons, not larger than that (provided the app supplies a PNG of at least that size or more or an SVG). If not it gives us 128px only.

The minimum is set to 128px and enforced by the linter as there are lots of projects in the wild that do no supply larger icons and there are lots of projects who don’t even have a 128px (smaller icons needs to be enlarged).

[nfroggy]

Thanks, glad to hear that it’s a known thing. From reading that issue I also see that GNOME Software moved to displaying 128x128@2 icons when they’re available with GNOME 48, so it’s nice to see that it’s been addressed for users who mainly look for apps on their own devices.