Bug 501694

Summary: Dolphin doesn't display icons for Android (APK) applications
Product: [Applications] dolphin Reporter: John <ilikefoss>
Component: generalAssignee: Dolphin Bug Assignee <dolphin-bugs-null>
Status: CONFIRMED ---    
Severity: wishlist CC: dolphin-bugs-null, kdedev
Priority: NOR    
Version First Reported In: 24.12.2   
Target Milestone: ---   
Platform: Debian unstable   
OS: Linux   
Latest Commit: Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:
Attachments: All the Android aps show the same generic Android icon

Description John 2025-03-18 13:56:31 UTC
Created attachment 179541 [details]
All the Android aps show the same generic Android icon

SUMMARY
Dolphin doesn't display icons for Android (APK) applications

STEPS TO REPRODUCE
1. Download a few applications for Android from F-droid.
2. Open the folder where you downloaded them.


OBSERVED RESULT
All applications have a generic Android icon.

EXPECTED RESULT
All applications have their own individual icon.
Similar to how other types of executables have their icons shown.

SOFTWARE/OS VERSIONS
Linux (Debian 13 - unstable repository)/KDE Plasma:
KDE Plasma Version: 6.3.2
KDE Frameworks Version: 6.11.0
Qt Version: 6.8.2
Kernel Version: 6.12.17-amd64 (64-bit)
Mesa  Version: 25.0.1-2
Graphics Platform: Wayland


HARDWARE SPECIFICATIONS
Hardware: Laptop Dell Inspiron 5770 (17" 1080p@60Hz screen)
CPU: Intel® Core™ i5-8250U CPU @ 1.60GHz (4 cores, 8 threads)
GPU 1: Intel® UHD Graphics 620 (main, Vulkan capable)
GPU 2: AMD Radeon R5 M465 Series
RAM: 8 GiB (7.7 GiB usable)


ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Since the .apk files are nothing more than just ZIP archives with a different extension than usual:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/3599219
It should be possible to look inside it and find the icon.
And this answer here confirms that it's possible:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/14483827
For development / debugging the 'aapt' tool can be used, which will display a lot of information about an .apk file, including which icon(s) it uses:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/14484950

Somebody also made a thumbnailer for Plasma:
https://github.com/z3ntu/kde-thumbnailer-apk
And somebody else made one for Gnome
https://github.com/adam-devel/apk-thumbnailer

But it would be really great if this was a built-in capability that Dolphin has, similar to how it can display icons for .AppImage files and for .exe files.
Working with multiple APK files, copying / moving them to the Android phone's memory through the file manager or through the scrcpy tool is a pain without icons and makes us lose time as we have to read all the names for each file to find the right one.
It's good that a generic Android icon i shown, but that doesn't help at all when all the files in the folder are APK files.
Which you can see how it looks in the attached print screen.
Comment 1 TraceyC 2025-03-21 19:42:43 UTC
Since there's a per-existing extension for this, it seems worth looking into this feature request