Icon Composer Redux

2026-07-13

I made a little app and wanted to put an Icon Composer icon in it. I got my SVGs, saved it to my project, and … it doesn’t build.

AppIcon.icon: Exception while running actool: *** -[__NSPlaceholderArray initWithObjects:count:]: attempt to insert nil object from objects[0]

Stitch pulling its face saying ‘WHYYYY???’

After finding a lot of posts (and reading the unhelpful Apple docs), I finally found that SVGs have to be “flattened”, i.e. they have to be path only, not groups. At least that’s how Google’s AI explained it to me. Since I don’t have an actual SVG generation tool, I’ve been using SF Symbols as my images. They apparently aren’t flattened. Who knew?

So I asked Google’s AI to flatten some SVGs for me, and guess what! It works!

I’ll write more later about the icon when I share the App    Colbert miming shush and locked lips

 

DANG IT.

I tested a bit and it turns out the culprit is the schmancy liquid glass effects around “specular.” In short, don’t use it. Probably for the best, otherwise it’ll get really goofy.