Josh Greco

iOS Application Naming

There has been a lot of discussion around the office about iOS application naming conventions, restrictions and guidelines—most notably about how long an application name can be on the device. It turns out there isn’t a hard character limit: whether or not the application name is truncated is based on the pixel width of the string of text. If an application name is longer than 145 pixels on a retina display device or 73 pixels on a non-retina display device it will be truncated.



This equates to 7 capital W’s, 24 capital I’s, or 11 mixed characters.

Its pretty simple to test whether or not your application name will fit within these constraints:

1. On your device, visit a website with Safari.
2. Tap the icon.
3. Tap ‘Add to Home Screen’.
4. Erase the existing name and add your own.
5. Tap the ‘Add’ button.

You’ll quickly see whether or not the application name you have in mind will be truncated.

See also: Neven Mrgan’s post on Broken iOS icons