What is the safe zone in Android Image Asset Studio

Question

In Android Studio, while creating a Launcher Icon, there is a preview of a "Safe zone" circle that defines a certain padding around the edge of the displayed boundaries.

What does it specifically define?

Answer 1

Adaptive Icons, which are introduced in Android O, allows the system to apply a shape mask on top of your icons, which gives users a more consistent icon theme. Instead of a mixed bag of square & circle icons, users can now be shown all square or all circle icons.

The question is, how big a mask can systems make? Can they clip away 40px (10px from each side) of your icon? How about 80px? 120px? Even 400px? So Google created a rule:

A device OEM can specify a mask that may include a radius that is as short as 33 dp along certain points of the shape.

So the "safe zone" is the area that is guaranteed to not be clipped.

It looks like Android is planning on introducing parallax effects on icons when scrolling in the home screen, when they do, icons that are not completely in the "safe zone" may get see unnatural motion with the background when they are being animated. (See the "Clock" icon, and how it "escapes" the bounds of the background)