What is the most iconic app icon of all time?

Squares you could pick out of a grid of two hundred without reading one label. Colour, shape, a single idea each.

1

Instagram

The camera outline on a purple-to-orange gradient, redrawn in 2016 from the original brown Polaroid.

2

TikTok

The wobbling music note with cyan and magenta fringing, designed to look like a glitching screen.

3

Snapchat

The white ghost on a yellow square, one of the few icons that never spells out its own name.

4

WhatsApp

The green speech bubble with a phone handset inside, recognisable at any size on any phone.

5

Spotify

Three curved bars on a green circle, standing in for sound waves coming out of a speaker.

6

Twitter bird

The blue silhouette that represented the platform for over a decade before the switch to X.

7

Facebook

The lowercase white f on a blue square, the most-installed icon on earth for most of the 2010s.

8

YouTube

The white play triangle in a red rounded rectangle, now shorthand for video itself.

9

Netflix

The folded red N, a piece of the wordmark cropped down until it worked as a square.

10

Google Maps

The red location pin over crossing roads, the shape every other map app now imitates.

11

Tinder

The white flame on a pink and orange gradient, an icon people recognise and still hide in a folder.

12

Shazam

The blue circle with a white S, tied to the one gesture of holding a phone up at a song.

13

Angry Birds

The scowling red bird that turned a 2009 puzzle game into plush toys and a film franchise.

14

Airbnb

The looping Bélo mark, meant to read at once as a location pin, a heart and a person.