Why is my smallIcon for Notifications always greyed out?

Question

I tried making the small icon exactly 16x16, gray-scaled, nothing but gray and white (the gray color being hex value 616161), to create a silhouette of my appli

Answer 1

For notification you have to use different icons for different versions of android:

Notification notification = new Notification.Builder(context)
                .setAutoCancel(true)
                .setContentTitle("My notification")
                .setContentText("Look, white in Lollipop, else color!")
                .setSmallIcon(getNotificationIcon())
                .build();
    return notification;

Get notification icon on the basis of version

private int getNotificationIcon() {
    boolean useWhiteIcon = (android.os.Build.VERSION.SDK_INT >= android.os.Build.VERSION_CODES.LOLLIPOP);
    return useWhiteIcon ? R.drawable.icon_silhouette : R.drawable.ic_launcher;
}