Developers can use thousands of different colors for their app icon to attract users, but according to the company's latest research Appbot it seems like they keep choosing basically the same colors. It's as if the developers only have half a box of crayons and have ignored or lost the other half. Maybe they've figured out what will make the most impression on the user, maybe they haven't.
Stuart Hall from Appthe bot took the most popular applications from App Store and generated an icon chart based on the colors of their icons, where you can see which icon colors are the most used. Stuart took the 200 most popular paid apps and the 200 most popular free apps. The size of the icons is then directly proportional to the popularity or download rate of each app.
As you can see in the pictures below. the developers actually only use blue and red, sometimes they dare to make a green or yellow icon. We rarely come across, for example, pink, and there is hardly any talk of such turquoise, at the same time it is a relatively interesting color. The situation is similar for Mac application icons.
What is behind this, or what the use of essentially only two colors is evidence of, is not entirely clear. Perhaps the developers have found that only their application will attract attention, as it is distinctive in some way and the user is more likely to notice it in the flood. On the other hand, they might just be boring and don't want to go to any extremes.
If you're a developer, the result might make you think about choosing a different color for your next app. But quite possibly, on the other hand, you will find that next time you should rather choose safety and go for red or blue.
Top 200 Paid Apps
Top 200 free apps
"Maybe they've figured out what works best for users, and maybe they don't."
Only I "maybe" haven't found it out, but it's just a well-known fact that blue has the best effect on people. Just talk to someone who is interested in logos.