What it does
Iconify provides icon discovery, data utilities, design plugins and rendering components. It supports several ways to display icons while keeping each imported set’s licence separate.
Iconify is useful when a product needs an icon picker or a common way to work with several libraries. Its tools can import, export and organize icon data, and its components can load selected icons on demand.
The rendering options serve different jobs:
| Approach | Useful distinction |
|---|---|
| CSS background or mask | Backgrounds retain a fixed palette; masks let monochrome icons follow the text color. |
| Inline SVG | Places the vector markup directly in the page. |
| On-demand component | Requests the named icon at runtime, useful for user-configurable choices. |
For design work, find an icon in the official catalog, select it, copy its SVG and paste into the design tool. Set a concrete color first if the destination does not support currentColor. SVG animations generally do not survive import into image editors.
Iconify’s software is open source, mainly under MIT, with some older packages using Apache or GPL. That does not replace the icon library’s own licence. Keep the set name with your selection so its terms remain identifiable.
Strengths
- Provides common tooling for several icon libraries.
- Offers direct SVG copying as well as bundled and runtime rendering.
Watch out for
- Icon-set licences remain separate from the software licence.
- Animated SVGs may lose their motion or render incorrectly in image editors.
Best for
- Applications with user-selectable icons.
- Teams building a shared icon integration layer.
Sources
- Iconify Design: All popular icon sets, one framework (Oct 27, 2026)
- Iconify: How to use icons (Oct 27, 2026)