Naming your app: title, icon and bundle id

By Abdalla Kamesh · Published October 3, 2026 · 4 min read

Photo: Ravi Roshan / Pexels

Most of a store app is configuration you can change any afternoon. Three things are not: the app name, the launcher icon, and the bundle identifier. All three are baked into the build, all three need a new version and a store review to change, and one of them cannot be changed at all.

Worth an hour of thought, then.

The bundle identifier — the one you cannot change

The bundle id (Apple) / application id (Android) is your app’s permanent identity to both platforms. Once an app is published, it cannot be changed. A new id is a new app: new listing, zero reviews, and every existing user has to find and install something different.

Use reverse-domain form based on a domain you own:

com.trailheadgoods.shop

Rules:

A domain you actually control, because it is how you prove ownership for deep links.
No vendor’s name in it. If a builder wants to publish you as com.somebuilder.yourstore, that is an identity you do not own and a signal about their whole model. Ask for your own.
Lowercase, letters and dots. No hyphens, no numbers if you can avoid them.
The same id on both platforms, for your own sanity.
Do not encode the year, a campaign, or “v2.”

If you might one day switch app builders, this is the field that determines whether the new build can ship as an update to your existing listing or has to be a new app. Why switching hinges on it.

The app name — 30 characters, and it is searchable

Both stores give you 30 characters for the name shown under the icon and in search results.

Put your brand first, and mostly stop there. “Trailhead Goods” beats “Trailhead Goods — Shop Outdoor Gear Online” for three reasons: it is what customers search, it does not truncate, and it does not read like SEO.

Add one clarifying word only if your brand name is ambiguous — “Trailhead Outdoors” if “Trailhead” alone means five other things.

Three practical constraints:

Apple requires app names to be unique across the App Store. Check availability before you print it on packaging.
The name under the home-screen icon truncates hard — around 11–12 characters on iOS before an ellipsis. So the first word must be recognizable on its own.
Never put a promotion in the name. “Trailhead Goods — 50% Off” is a build, a review, and a name you have to change back. Campaigns belong in over-the-air configuration.

Keep the name stable. Frequent changes reset recognition and confuse customers who search for what is on their packing slip.

The icon — designed for 40 pixels, not 1024

You will upload a 1024×1024 icon to Apple and a 512×512 to Google, and you will design it in a tool where it fills your screen. Then it will be displayed at about 40 to 60 pixels on a crowded home screen, next to sixty other apps.

Design for the small size:

One element, not a scene. A single mark, letter or symbol. Your full logo with a wordmark becomes an illegible smudge.

High contrast against both light and dark wallpapers. Test it on a white background and a black one.

No text, except a single letter or a very short monogram. Your app’s name is already written underneath it.

Fill the canvas. Do not add your own padding — the platforms add their own spacing, and a small mark floating in a large square looks like a mistake.

No transparency, no pre-rounded corners for Apple’s 1024 asset. The OS masks it; a pre-rounded icon gets rounded twice and looks wrong.

Distinct from your competitors’ icons. Then check it against the other apps on your own phone.

The test: export it at 48 px, put it on a home screen with other apps, and look at it from arm’s length. If you cannot tell which one is yours, simplify.

What each change costs later

Change	Cost
Bundle identifier	Impossible after publishing — a new app, new listing, zero reviews
App name	New build + store review; resets recognition
Launcher icon	New build + store review; customers hunt for the new icon
Theme, colours, layout, banners, intro slides	Published over the air, no review

That table is the reason to spend the hour. Everything in the last row is reversible for free. Everything above it is not.

A checklist before you build

Bundle id in reverse-domain form, on a domain you own, no vendor name, same on both platforms.
App name: brand first, under 30 characters, first word recognizable in 11, checked for App Store availability, no promotion in it.
Icon: one element, high contrast, no text, fills the canvas, no transparency or pre-rounded corners.
Test the icon at 48 px on a real home screen.
Write all three down somewhere you will find them in two years, along with which Apple and Google accounts they live under.

Point 5 sounds trivial and is the one people wish they had done. Two years from now, when someone asks which account owns the app and what the bundle id is, that note is the difference between an afternoon and a week.

Related reading

Character limits and icon requirements are set by Apple and Google and change occasionally — verify current specifications before you export.