- Embed icons in HTML with SVG framework or components for front-end frameworks.
- Embed icons in designs with plug-ins for Figma, Sketch and Adobe XD.
- Add icon search to your applications with Iconify Icon Finder.
For more information visit [https://iconify.design/](https://iconify.design/).
# Iconify SVG framework
There are many fonts and SVG sets available, but they all have one thing in common: using any font or SVG set limits you to icons that are included in that set and forces browsers to load entire font or icons set. That limits developers to one or two fonts or icon sets.
Iconify uses a new innovative approach to loading icons. Unlike fonts and SVG frameworks, Iconify only loads icons that are used on the page instead of loading entire fonts. How is it done? By serving icons dynamically from publicly available JSON API (you can make a copy of script and API if you prefer to keep everything on your servers).
Iconify SVG framework is designed to be as easy to use as possible.
or, if you are building a project with something like WebPack or Rollup, you can include the script by installing `@iconify/iconify` as a dependency and importing it in your project:
That is it. Change `data-icon` value to the name of the icon you want to use. There are over 100,000 premade icons to choose from, including FontAwesome, Material Design Icons, Tabler Icons, Box Icons, Unicons, Bootstrap Icons and even several emoji sets.
Do you want to make your own icon sets? Everything you need is [available on GitHub](https://github.com/iconify): tools for creating custom icon sets, Iconify API application and documentation to help you.
## Full documentation
Below is a shortened version of documentation.
Full documentation is available on Iconify website:
The syntax is similar to icon fonts. Instead of inserting `SVG` in the document, you write a placeholder element, such `SPAN` or `I`.
Iconify SVG framework finds those placeholders and uses the following logic to parse them:
1. Retrieves icon name from `data-icon` attribute.
2. Checks if icon exists. If not, it sends a request to Iconify API to retrieve icon data.
3. Replaces placeholder element with `SVG`.
This is done in a fraction of a second. Iconify SVG framework watches DOM for changes, so whenever you add new placeholders, it immediately replaces them with `SVG`, making it easy to use with dynamic content, such as AJAX forms.
### Inline mode
Code examples above use different class names: the first example uses "iconify", the second example uses "iconify-inline".
What is the difference?
- "iconify" renders icon as is, so it behaves like an image.
- "iconify-inline" renders adds vertical alignment to the icon, making it behave like text (inline mode).
Usually, icon fonts do not render like normal images, they render like text. Text is aligned slightly below the baseline.
Visual example to show the difference between inline and block modes:
When you use an icon font, each visitor loads an entire font, even if your page only uses a few icons. This is a major downside of using icon fonts. That limits developers to one or two fonts or icon sets.
Unlike icon fonts, Iconify SVG framework does not load the entire icon set. Unlike fonts and SVG frameworks, Iconify only loads icons that are used on the current page instead of loading entire icon sets. How is it done? By serving icons dynamically from publicly available JSON API.
### Custom API
Relying on a third party service is often not an option. Many companies and developers prefer to keep everything on their own servers to have full control.
Iconify API and icon sets are all [available on GitHub](https://github.com/iconify), making it easy to host API on your own server.
You can also create custom Iconify API to serve your own icons. For more details see [hosting custom icons in Iconify documentation](https://docs.iconify.design/api/hosting.html).
While the default method of retrieving icons is to retrieve them from API, there are other options. Iconify SVG framework is designed to be as flexible as possible.
Easiest option to serve icons without API is by creating icon bundles.
Icon bundles are small scripts that you can load after Iconify SVG framework or bundle it together in one file.
There are 2 types of icons: monotone and coloured.
- Monotone icons are icons that use only 1 colour and you can change that colour. Most icon sets fall into this category: FontAwesome, Unicons, Material Design Icons, etc.
- Coloured icons are icons that use the preset palette. Most emoji icons fall into this category: Noto Emoji, Emoji One, etc. You cannot change the palette for those icons.
Monotone icons use font colour, just like glyph fonts. To change colour, you can do this:
Previous versions of this package were dual-licensed under Apache 2.0 and GPL 2.0 licence, which was messy and confusing. This was later changed to MIT for simplicity.
