The indicators work well monochrome because they were designed from
the start to be Monochrome, and include only simple shapes and
outlines. Regular icons do not work this way.
Perhaps an option to desaturate the launcher icons, or a Unity plugin
if we get a plugin framework. But using this as default is a huge step
backward in usability for most people, particularly those with vision
loss, as the icons will blend into the launcher.
Some OS designers or theme designers may disagree with this basic premise. Or artists may not have time to produce symbolic variations of all the icons for which software developers desire them. Therefore, there should be a mechanism for developers to request a symbolic variation of an icon, such that it will gracefully fall back to the non-symbolic equivalent if — whether intentionally or unintentionally — no symbolic variation has been provided."