Says you can make unplated assets — but doesn’t say how

[matthewpaulthomas]

“If you want, you can provide a target-based unplated asset.” Unfortunately, there are no instructions on how.

(Apparently this involves producing files with names where “.png” is changed to “_altform-unplated.png”.)

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Document Details

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• ID: bc48efcd-ad3f-1b01-6a6a-a6865b4b7624
• Version Independent ID: 84184d50-3c9b-cce9-6007-3ef2e954cdf5
• Content: App icons and logos - Windows UWP applications
• Content Source: windows-apps-src/design/style/app-icons-and-logos.md
• Product: uwp
• Technology: design
• GitHub Login: @mijacobs
• Microsoft Alias: mijacobs

[chigy]

Trying to locate area experts.

[bschoepke]

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/msix/desktop/desktop-to-uwp-manual-conversion#optional-add-target-based-unplated-assets

You're right, you just add the _altform-unplated suffix to your file names.

There are a lot more details on this page, and note that you can also specify a different unplated asset for the new light theme:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/app-resources/tailor-resources-lang-scale-contrast#shell-light-theme-and-unplated-resources

[matthewpaulthomas]

Thanks @bschoepke. To summarise:

• MSIX “Package a desktop app manually”
  • Suggests “For each 44x44 image, create a copy in the same folder and append .targetsize-44_altform-unplated to the file name” … Which seems … questionable? (Since the point of them being separate assets is that they aren’t just copies, they have different margins and often different colours.)
  • Doesn’t mention the light theme
  • Links to UWP “VisualElements” which includes Logo and SmallLogo
• UWP “App icons and logos”
  • Lists most assets, including BadgeLogo, but not Logo nor SmallLogo
  • Illustrates and explains unplated assets, but doesn’t mention their filenames
  • Doesn’t mention the light theme
• UWP “Tailor your resources for language, scale, high contrast, and other qualifiers”
  • describes altform-lightunplated for the light theme
  • mentions altform-unplated only in passing.

If it were up to me, I’d expand the “Icon types, locations, and scale factors” table to five columns:

Icon name	Appears in	Asset file name	Unplated variant (dark theme)	Unplated variant (light theme)

That would make it obvious not just what each filename was, but also which assets benefit from unplated variants and which do not. Then the other two pages could link to that canonical table.