Iconify: Library of Open Source Icons

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551 points by sea-gold a month ago on hackernews | 58 comments

[OP] sea-gold | a month ago

Previous discussions:

September 2024 (4 comments, 17 points): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41615563

FireInsight | a month ago

https://icones.js.org/ is a good site to search through these IMO

vjay15 | a month ago

Really useful thank you!

ulrischa | a month ago

Question to all HN Users: what is the best icon library?

pixelready | a month ago

Honestly, I always default to material icons unless a project calls for a very specific style. The coverage is just so dang good I rarely find a scenario without an appropriate icon and the style is neutral enough to blend in with a number of UI designs.

Bewelge | a month ago

I really like https://phosphoricons.com/

But other than that, I also usually default to Material UI Icons.

coolewurst | a month ago

I like Material Symbols best. Largest selection AFAIK and simple enough that you can create unique ones that fit in.

Alupis | a month ago

My only issue with Material-anything is it immediately looks/feels to me like something Google-related.

Not a deal-breaker entirely, but for my own things I like differentiate.

: coolewurst | a month ago
I see your point and like to do things myself, just so they're mine, but I feel like there's only so many ways to skin a cat and draw a plus symbol.
Most users will not care if they have seen a map icon in another app before anyway.
: Itoldmyselfso | a month ago
If you use rounded or outline variants it's a bit different at least. There's also the two-tone variant which at least I haven't seen used much

tezza | a month ago

I’ve used FlatIcon extensively. My use case is video games rather than web design.

https://www.flaticon.com/

: jojomodding | a month ago
Sadly not open source licensed

thecopy | a month ago

https://lucide.dev/

egeozcan | a month ago

I learned about this thanks to claude always using it.

deaux | a month ago

These now instantly ring everyone's slop alarm bells. I'd choose any set over them.

sabellito | a month ago

Completely disagree, don't know of anyone who'd share that opinion.

: deaux | a month ago
Don't worry, after a few years everyone will agree with me. 2 years ago I was talking about the "Not just X, but Y" slop marker and no one had an idea what I was talking about. Now even the average corporate marketer recognizes it as an immediate slop hallmark. Slop websites, and Lucide being one of their hallmarks, are now where that phrase was 2 years ago.

greatgib | a month ago

Why you don't like this set? You feel negative after looking at their website or you have a more serious reason?

: deaux | a month ago
It's used by 99% of slop websites because it's the go to of any LLM if not prompted to do otherwise.

mbsa7 | a month ago

https://www.svgrepo.com I find the site very user friendly as it lets you customize the stroke's width, color etc, see how it looks like and copy the modified version.

: Frotag | a month ago
This site shows up on google a lot but it's a bit sketchy that there isn't a link to the source / license text. Not to mention the SEO heavy descriptions.
> Free Download Wallet 460 SVG vector file in monocolor and multicolor type for Sketch and Figma from Wallet 460 Vectors svg vector
Plus I've found the license listed isn't always accurate. For example the emojione icons are listed as MIT. But the actual repo says CC 4.0, with the non-artwork being MIT.
https://www.svgrepo.com/svg/404123/skull-and-crossbones
https://github.com/joypixels/emojione/

croisillon | a month ago

famfamfam of course, the only set one will ever need

: swhitf | a month ago
The GOAT. I remember when basically every page on the internet had one of these icons on.

ComputerGuru | a month ago

You’ll get a lot of responses but for me (excuse the nostalgia), icon design peaked with famfamfam’s (aka Mark James’s) Silk iconset from ~2005. It was a shame they were never available at higher resolutions (or as SVG), though I’m betting AI (either as Adobe Illustrator or Artificial Intelligence) can probably rectify that these days (and generate subpar additional icons to expand the set).

View: https://peacocksoftware.com/silk

Download: https://github.com/markjames/famfamfam-silk-icons/tree/maste...

qingcharles | a month ago

I've used Tabler for everything so far (free, 4500 icons)

https://tabler.io/icons

RestartKernel | a month ago

This makes me want to write a post about the rabbit hole that is icon optimisation. It drives me insane when websites suffer from layout shift simply because they are not inlining their icons, for one.

: jetin | a month ago
I agree with your comment, it is often an overlooked topic. Inlining icons can be one answer but be aware of the growing size of your DOM. Depending on the complexity, number and repetition of the icons you are using, an approach including lazy loading can be better. Layout shift is first and foremost caused by an improper space reservation.
: 8organicbits | a month ago
I believe setting width/height is a good fix here, although I see aspect ratio suggested as well. Inlining icons would prevent caching.
https://web.dev/articles/optimize-cls#history_of_width_and_h...

mythz | a month ago

iconify has been my primary source of icons for over a year now.

Most of my Websites/Apps don't use rasterized graphics for design anymore, SVG + CSS gradients/backgrounds & effects seem to handle everything I need.

hirako2000 | a month ago

To point out some of these SVGs are nicely animated and can be searched for.

I used them for my offline text editor, the result turned wonderful (icons wise)

https://wrifocus.bounded.cc

albert_e | a month ago

Thanks for sharing -- looks very useful to me.

Can you share any other details about your project -- if it can be self hosted, etc.

hirako2000 | a month ago

I was hoping to open source it. Once I get to add some missing features and fix a few glitches.

The purpose of self hosting isn't that useful as it's totally offline, everything goes to local storage and indexdb. It stays on the browser.

But happy to share the repo if you would like to make it your own.

albert_e | a month ago

offline is even great!

if you are able to share the repo - that's great - thanks!

i am toying with an idea of having a very light weight "idea capture" solution so i can capture my raw ideas with least friction .. and then channel them into more organized projects / drafts / blogs etc later.

experimenting with tools like obsidian+git, github.dev, wispr flow, etc as input and storage channels ... but a lightweight markdown style note editor woould probably be a useful addition. need to experiment to find out for sure though.

: hirako2000 | a month ago
Obsidian would likely integrate better to this workflow.
There is stackedit, also an offline first editor. Far more mature, can sync and store to the typical storage services.
This app I made is.. more lightweight. It loads instantly for quick writing with no distractions. Pure markdown. Can organise but not mature.
My contact is via my profile if you need access give your GitHub account.

echoangle | a month ago

Which icon set is that? When I filter for „contains animations“, I only get 3 icon sets where 2 are loaders and one is weather icons.

: hirako2000 | a month ago
line-md is the one. Plenty more than 3 animated.
For size consistency, better stick to the same pack or you are on for SVG editing

catoc | a month ago

The settings icon ‘sprouting’ cogs is really nice!

The editor also looks really nice. Could this not be used online as well? Persistence on the server instead of browser cache? (Curious what your use case is for an offline browser based editor?)

hirako2000 | a month ago

The use case is privacy. Data getting harvested by free and even paid for services isn't pleasant (targeted ads, data breach etc)

If I get to add some "server" capability it will rather be webrtc, basically P2P to sync between devices, or a config to plug our own store. E.g GitHub, Google drive, dropbox or a self hosted service to SCP the files.

It isn't just browser cached, one can export individual documents or the entire store as a zipped folder. And back that up.

: catoc | a month ago
The editor can be online - persistence is primarily local - that makes sense
: rezonant | a month ago
Offline first (or only) is the way :-D

DenisDolya | a month ago

Thank you for sharing, this will come in handy for me.

aziis98 | a month ago

This simply solved icons for me

nawaz0x1 | a month ago

Nice work

primaprashant | a month ago

They also have an API which you can use to get the icon SVG.

I love making (architecture) diagrams in D2 [1], and love using the vast library of icons from Iconify in my diagrams where it makes sense. A sample diagram with SVG from Iconfiy would look like this:

  docker: Docker {
    icon: https://api.iconify.design/logos/docker-icon.svg
  }

  kubernetes: Kubernetes {
    icon: https://api.iconify.design/logos/kubernetes.svg
  }

  docker -> kubernetes: deploy

[1]: https://d2lang.com/

davidcann | a month ago

My site can extend a bunch of the icon sets that are on Iconify with AI image models, so you can feel comfortable using a more unique set than just the big ones: https://universymbols.com

stared | a month ago

Nice!

One features that would be really nice would be to pick and icon (or a few) and compare these against all these icon sets.

So the process is "I want to have save icon matches the best my design" and go from there.

BaudouinVH | a month ago

I would have placed the search box on the left above "Filter icons set" #my2cents

EGreg | a month ago

Are these correlated, by css class name, or like a font? So we could switch a “theme”?

joshuaisaact | a month ago

This is a brilliant library, thanks so much for sharing it

t_mahmood | a month ago

https://www.svgrepo.com/ is another one that I have found very useful.

aeontech | a month ago

Since people are posting links to alternatives, another awesome source is the noun project. Has a mix of royalty-free, Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0, and paid license icons.

https://thenounproject.com/

: pdntspa | a month ago
Noun project is great but you have to manually remove a bunch of junk from their SVGs to make them usable unless you pay. It's kind of BS

pdntspa | a month ago

Great! But where is the "download all" button.

Folders on my hard drive > anything hosted on the web

: quintu5 | a month ago
It’s all available in their GitHub repo.

lasgawe | a month ago

Love this. I use their Figma plugin almost every day.

paradox460 | a month ago

Pictogrammers have one small advantage over this: they give you the home assistant code for any icon in material. Sure, it's not hard to figure the code yourself, but being able to click a button and get the right one is great

czhu12 | a month ago

Huge props to this project. Use it daily for everything I’ve built. It has icons on basically everything.

I was pleasantly surprised the other other day that it had both colored and uncolored devicons for the k3s project, which definitely isn’t that mainstream

atonse | a month ago

Iconify solved icons for us. I love just sending a designer or UX person there and telling them to go nuts.