Share My Creation Material Design Icons Reorganizer

Google has released a large set of icons in material design for use in your apps.

The newest set of these icons can be downloaded here: https://github.com/google/material-design-icons

The problem with this great archive is that it contains many icons in resolutions and formats you don't need if you just want to create Android Apps. Another bad thing is that they are all packed into very few drawable folders so if you search for just one icon for a dark theme in different resolutions for hdpi, xhdpi etc. it is very confusing to pick just the files you need.

So I started to learn B4J (yes, it's my first B4J project) and hacked down a simple reorganize tool which simply copies the icons you wish to a directory structure which is much more handy to pick a single icon.

Usage:

The program is a Non-GUI application and you can specify the following parameters:

<Source Path> - The path to the original Google icon files. You have to keep the original directory structure intact.
<Destination Path> - The destination path. A new directory structure will be created here.
[<color>] [<color>] ... - A list of color names which should be copied to the new structure. Usually you will only need "black" and "white" icons. If you don't give one or more colors as parameter all colors will be copied.
[<density>] [<density>] ... - A list of density or size values. Google provided all icons in different densities. For ActionBar action icons you will only need 24dip icons so specify just "24" here. If you need the icons in other densities then just specify another density as a parameter. If you ommit the density parameter icons in all densities are copied.

The directory structure created is like this:

<Destination Path>\<color>\<density>\<category>\<icon_name>\drawable-xxx\<icon file name>

So if you want to copy an icon to your project just copy all the drawable-xxx folders of the icon to your res folder of your android app. Seems to be much easier to handle for me.

I created an icon archive with just 24dp icons (for ActionBar/Toolbar) in black and white (light and dark theme). This reduced the number of icons in the archive from 72000 to 7500 and it is much easier to pick all drawables for just a single icon.

Be aware that this tool was "hacked" down in just a few hours. It works well for me but it may miss some error handling.

 

[RandomCoder]

Am I missing something really obvious? I've downloaded the Material Design Icons and end up with a zip file that is 57.3MB in size, but it only has the Action category. I can't find anyway to download the Navigation category which is the group of icons I'd like to use. The only way I can actually get the icon(s) I need is to download each one individually. I really must be missing a trick somewhere?

PS. great utility for sorting the icons into folders and it's driven me to install and try out B4J. I just wish I could get the other icon categories now! Maybe it's time for bed, I'll try again tomorrow evening

 

[corwin42]

Am I missing something really obvious? I've downloaded the Material Design Icons and end up with a zip file that is 57.3MB in size, but it only has the Action category. I can't find anyway to download the Navigation category which is the group of icons I'd like to use. The only way I can actually get the icon(s) I need is to download each one individually. I really must be missing a trick somewhere?

The material-design-icons-1.0.1.zip from the linked github page in my post has all categories in it.

 

[RandomCoder]

The material-design-icons-1.0.1.zip from the linked github page in my post has all categories in it.

@corwin42 would you please be so kind as to check that the GIT Hub download still contains all folders for you. I've attempted at home using Chrome and again now whilst at work using IE and still I only get a zip file containing the Action Folder and none of the other folders. The zip file size is 57.5MB, how does this compare with your original download?

Thanks,
RandomCoder.

 

[corwin42]

@corwin42 would you please be so kind as to check that the GIT Hub download still contains all folders for you. I've attempted at home using Chrome and again now whilst at work using IE and still I only get a zip file containing the Action Folder and none of the other folders. The zip file size is 57.5MB, how does this compare with your original download?

Yes, the size is correct.
Do you use this download link? All categories are in there.

 

[RandomCoder]

Well I must be being really stupid with this as I honestly cannot find the Navigation Icons

The link you have kindly provided is the same link I have now downloaded over half a dozen times in the vague hope that a different browser or a different machine etc would yield different results. But alas its always the same

The folder structure is this...

material-design-icons-1.0.1

action

1x_ios
1x_web
2x_ios
2x_web
3x_ios
drawable-hdpi
drawable-mdpi​

The icon I am after is shown in the link provided within the README.md file, material icons
Under Navigation, the icon is called "arrow forward".
It's just not present in my download. The closest I can find is "ic_trending_neutral_black" in various sizes.

I can get the icon manually from Github or just as easily create it myself. My frustration is more that Google has provided this fantastic resource and I seem to be missing some of it? I must be doing something stupid

PS. I'm very sorry to have hijacked this thread, your app worked flawlessly!