New VS Code icon is ugly!

[lipstick-turtleback]

Can we return previous app icon or draw a new one?

It really looks bad. https://code.visualstudio.com/images/1_17_windows-stable-orange.png

[RocTeng]

I also think the previous icon was more beautiful.

[cuixiaodao]

I also think the previous icon was more beautiful.

[dmsvlks]

Why orange,? Blue was way better looking. Now it looks like an office app.

[AndyK-dev]

Yep, orange icon looks awful.

[ghost]

Dupl #35683

[Kenya-West]

It is better. It now suits the whole Visual Studio product family identics.

[terrybleger]

Steve Jobs on Microsoft:

They just have no taste.

[bermanboris]

Previous icon was awesome. This one looks weird..

[ghost]

I need an icon on my navigation bar, which has some animation and smiling, when i have frustration that something is not working, it might help.:)

[Matheus-de-Souza]

The new icon seems like a mix with the sublime icon and some adobe product icon... The old one had its own personality.

[BeerPoldet]

Please change it back

[dimdin]

It is the ugliest icon I have ever seen. Vscode is the only application on my Mac that I have changed the icon. Note also that I tried to locate the old version of the icon from the sources, but I found that the icon is not there!

[ghost]

Stop cry for new VS Code icon. It looks good!

[MichaelGrupp]

This is a very critical show-stopper for serious coding and needs to be changed.

[lipstick-turtleback]

This new icon reduces coding speed in 5 times. It's ridiculous!

[ITSecMedia]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who has a problem with this nasty ugly orange / brown icon. The worst color of all.

[shobhitg]

I don't find the new orange icon particularly bad, but it really looks like a ripoff of Sublime's new icon.

Here are both icons for comparison. Sublime came up with its icon first, then vscode followed.

[mohd-akram]

It looks like they accidentally inverted the colors.

[bestvow]

I also think the previous icon was more beautiful.

[rlvillacarlos]

I find it confusing especially when you have a Firefox open at the same time. It doesn't stand-out like the previous one.

[WaveF]

I also think the previous icon was more beautiful. New vscode icon won't stay on my taskbar.

[ofirgeller]

I do not like the new icon. Visual studio have the infinity symbol as if to say "you can do anything with this!" and the new icon is telling you that there is a limit.

Please revert or make it optional somehow.

*Edited to make a bit more civil.

[malko]

when reduced it looks like a X and a J no more like an infinity symbol

[fractos]

Just provided feedback on Twitter. I regard the new icon as a visual regression of style. It does not fit with a Windows 10 dark theme and the orangey/muddy colour appears like a blend of other popular icon colours which makes it not stand out and it becomes lost in the Windows task bar. It might seem like a little thing that "people will just get used to", but it really affects how a person feels about an application. I can't imagine that this was a popular choice internally.

The previous icon was ideal - the vivid blue and the Code logo were balanced. Please revert this!

[pete-willard]

As little as I care about the shape of the icon itself (although it confusingly reminds me of Excel or some other Office app now) the color change really bugs me. The blue was perfect and easy to spot on the dock. I catch myself working hard to find the icon now and end up clicking on Safari by mistake.

[sw-jung]

If vscode is notified in the windows task bar, it looks strange because the colors are similar.

[Leedehai]

This is too ugly.

1. Especially, being slightly rotated makes this icon seem "unstable". Yes, I know designers wanted to imitate macOS's icon style, but clearly they didn't get the point.
2. Less elegant than the old one and Sublime; a drift away from simplicism.
3. The colors (dark gray + orange) and the structure of the icon collectively imply this app is a heavy-weight IDE like XCode or IntelliJ, not a light-weight editor (THIS IS IMPORTANT).

Steve Jobs was right on Microsoft:

They just have no taste.

Yes, I know Microsoft overhauled its entire Visual Studio family icons (blog).. this just makes Steve Jobs's comment even more convincing.

THEY just have no taste. They JUST have no taste. They just HAVE no taste. They just have NO taste. They just have no TASTE.

Again.. I hate this orange!!!

[SethPoulsen]

I agree, please change the icon. It's really bad. If you want to have the new look, at least go back to blue instead of orange.

[kirkone]

For me it looks like a fish in a tank. 🐠

[Talhah]

I wouldn't have problem with the icon, but the change of colour is such a nuisance. It takes me twice as long to locate VS Code when switching between apps. They could have at least kept the same colour.

[guilhermepontes]

Tutorial to how to get the old icon back on macOS:

https://gist.github.com/guilhermepontes/8e20b3394b3d6931849bbd0b64cdd8e4

[dherges]

Orange is good but it looks too much like Excel!

[dherges]

But why is the bottom bar then still blue-ish :large_blue_diamond: ? Shouldn't the bar be :tangerine: ?

[flekmatik]

I hate when software I use is getting worse for no reason. Windows 8/Xbox One all over again ...

[bridgetlane]

I feel like I am opening files with adobe illustrator

[swieder227]

I created a flat version of the old icon, using the new branding. I can't stand the off-kilter layout of the new macOS icon.

FWIW, the cool blue was much more visually appealing than this crusty burnt orange.

Png Preview

macOS Icon vscode-icon-flat.icns.zip

[mradcliffe]

I did not want want to +1 the opening post because I felt like it did not offer any positive comments about the new logo. I think that those reading should go ahead and read the blog post about the iterations around the new logo as well as posts and answers in #6607. And then add a emotive reaction to the issue.

Personally I find the new logo

• Too busy compared to the simplicity of the old Visual Studio brand, and my eye really focuses on the left bar, especially when looking at the small icon in the tool bar.
  • There does not seem to be anything to do here as this is the new direction to take.
• I don't see "openness" in the new logo, but have opposite feeling of a deviant face especially with the flattened version in Windows and the orange color really shows off that. The effect is less pronounced using the softer green color.
  • This might be better if the color was changed to a softer color for release users. Maybe swap the release and internal color?
  • Maybe minimize the use of hard edges with rounded corners, but this goes against the design guidelines for the Visual Studio brand so I don't think there is anything that can be done there.
    • Maybe widening the angle would make it feel more open and look like a happier face to me?

After reading the intent of the design to reflect openness rather than an enclosure (fish bowl) or a face, I think that I could get used to the face as a passionate developer rather than a mean-looking face.

[fractos]

(@mradcliffe Comments are closed on that article.)

To: Microsoft VS Code team

I've re-installed 1.16.1 and have set "updateChannel" to "none".

I never want to have the new icon - it looks awful and genuinely makes me annoyed that it has been changed. I really liked the colour of VS Code's icon and how it worked with the livery. I really liked the Infinity sign as it was; amongst other things, it reminded me of the Zuul game character eyes. It was cool how it was and you've just torched it.

Code is meant to be stand-alone, so why is it getting stuck with the same branding as the other VS components? I think that's a mistake.

I hope that we can get the old icon back. I always find it amazing that developers and designers seem so surprised to find that these little things really matter to people. It's a problem that's happened for so long and I don't understand why these things aren't more customisable.

C'mon, throw us a bone here.

(edit: added clarification of directing responses)

[CaptainN]

The new color is the color of poo. None of the icons in the justification article, "Iterations on Infinity" are the color of poo - they are pleasant flowery colors.

(There are plumbers downstairs as I type this swapping out a length of sewage pipe in my home. Perhaps poo is on my mind. But really, why is it brown?)

[mradcliffe]

@fractos, agreed with your feedback too. Also, it would be preferable not to direct any comment to any on personally. I am not affiliated with Microsoft either. I am only a user giving feedback the same as you. :-)

[fractos]

@mradcliffe No worries! I only meant to address the part about the comments being closed to you. All good.

[Leedehai]

Well.. who can provide the old VSCode's icons for macOS (the blue, minimistic infinity symbol)? In the app package, they are Contents/Resources/code.icns and Contents/Resources/code_file.icns (code_file shown below)

Strangely enough.. i cannot find them in VSCode's old branches (the icon files are wrong..)

EIDT: found.. version 1.16's icons are here (for macOS)

[petemill]

The new logo looks very dated because of its slanting (on macOS), busy layers, and visually unexciting because of its colors.

The old blue logo conveyed the simplicity and minimalism whilst using beautiful design features such as transparency and a flat single layer. Personally, that's important, in this arguably unimportant but personal issue.

[MatthieuScarset]

This is a non-sense logo... please revert it to the good-looking previous blue one :)

[akras-apixio]

+1 it looks like New Sublime Logo on Fire and confusing. I like the old one.

[DonovanBoddy]

Why not make it easy and just give us the option to revert to the old one?

[1l0]

I created this based on @Leedehai's svg file, added some tweaks for macOS compliance: Download for various formats here

[Aquamars]

The new logo like chinese word ' 刈'. I don't like it.

[brunocassol]

Please consider reverting the icon. It's very confusing on Linux too and when small it looks weird in comparison to previous version.

[donysukardi]

Cross post from https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode/issues/6607#issuecomment-335664326

I removed the card background. It doesn't look that bad now.

Here's the preview on the Dock

You can grab the .icns file here - https://www.dropbox.com/s/a0qu1ofn473wc1q/Code.icns?dl=1 and run cp Code.icns /Applications/Visual\ Studio\ Code.app/Contents/Resources/Code.icns whenever it gets updated