Some icons seem to be rendered with incorrect anti-aliasing

[vvzen]

Describe the bug
Hi all!
Thanks for the great work on the Cosmic DE Beta.
I've recently upgraded from PopOS 22 to Cosmic DE 24! Things are running pretty smoothly, but I couldn't but notice that some application icons that were previously rendered correctly now seems to exhibit incorrect anti-aliasing.

For example, in the screenshots below, see how the Firefox, VLC, Steam and Doom Emacs icon look as if they're not really aliased correctly, at least compared to COSMIC system icons that are looking just as sharp and clear as expected (like COSMIC Terminal/Files/Store/Settings).

This problem seems to be visible in a few places:

• The dock
• The system tray
• Cosmic launcher

I don't know how to easily reproduce this properly so I'm opening an issue to understand how Cosmic is even finding which icon to use, and if there are potential workarounds that can be done on my side.

Expected behavior
All icons of a high enough resolution are rendered sharply.

Screenshots

Desktop (please complete the following information):

$ cosmic-settings --version
cosmic-settings 0.1.0

$ uname -a
Linux popos-box 6.16.3-76061603-generic #202508231538~1759252525~24.04~c08ae99 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Tue S x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

$ apt list 2>/dev/null | grep cosmic-session
cosmic-session/noble,now 0.1.0~1758302814~24.04~379ce30 amd64 [installed,automatic]

[pchest]

I've encountered this issue as well.

[Habarug]

This applies to most icons for me. Since this thread hasn't gotten much attention, does it mean that it doesn't apply to most? I'm running CachyOS, originally with Gnome. Whether the app was installed before or after switch DE doesn't affect the icon.

[mr-zlaam]

I have the same issue.

Click on image for better visibility.

[torrobinson]

Noticed this too - see the Discord icon is very smooth, but Steam's is very jaggy:

(So it happens in both the dock and panel)

[MillyChurch]

Same issue here, any solutions?

[nonetrix]

Same here quite pixelated unnecessarily so

[fm-falken]

Same thing here, fresh install

[celestialorb]

Hate to be another +1, but I'm seeing the same issue.

Oddly enough the Factorio icon appears to be fine.

[mrlnstk]

I "solved" this issue by installing the Papirus icon theme and selecting it in the settings. It seems the Cosmic default theme does not provide the SVG icon files for common programs like Chrome, Discord etc. Papirus does.

[pchest]

@mrlnstk Your solution worked for me!

[nonetrix]

I "solved" this issue by installing the Papirus icon theme and selecting it in the settings. It seems the Cosmic default theme does not provide the SVG icon files for common programs like Chrome, Discord etc. Papirus does.

Separate issue for this would be good if it doesn't already exist, also maybe this issue could be renamed to specify that it is about raster icons

[Milli189]

this issue has been present since alpha 1, hopefully it will get fixed soon

[Milli189]

I "solved" this issue by installing the Papirus icon theme and selecting it in the settings. It seems the Cosmic default theme does not provide the SVG icon files for common programs like Chrome, Discord etc. Papirus does.

but if apps like chrome don't have svg icons, then how come they don't look pixelated in gnome or kde? this seems like an issue that COSMIC has to resolve