Icons

Guidance and suggestions for using icons with Material-UI.

Material-UI provides icons support in three ways:

Standardized Material Design icons exported as React components (SVG icons).
With the SvgIcon component, a React wrapper for custom SVG icons.
With the Icon component, a React wrapper for custom font icons.

Material Icons

Material Design has standardized over 1,000 official icons, each in five different "themes" (see below). For each SVG icon, we export the respective React component from the @material-ui/icons package. You can search the full list of these icons in our built-in search page.

Usage

Install @material-ui/icons. Import icons using one of these two options:

Option 1:

import AccessAlarmIcon from '@material-ui/icons/AccessAlarm';
import ThreeDRotation from '@material-ui/icons/ThreeDRotation';

Option 2:

import { AccessAlarm, ThreeDRotation } from '@material-ui/icons';

The safest is Option 1 but Option 2 can yield the best developer experience. Make sure you follow the minimizing bundle size guide before using the second approach. The configuration of a Babel plugin is encouraged.

Each icon also has a "theme": Filled (default), Outlined, Rounded, Two tone and Sharp. If you want to import the icon component with a "theme" different than default, append the "theme" name to the icon name. For example @material-ui/icons/Delete icon with:

Filled "theme" (default) is exported as @material-ui/icons/Delete,
Outlined "theme" is exported as @material-ui/icons/DeleteOutlined,
Rounded "theme" is exported as @material-ui/icons/DeleteRounded,
Two tone "theme" is exported as @material-ui/icons/DeleteTwoTone,
Sharp "theme" is exported as @material-ui/icons/DeleteSharp.

Note: The Material Design specification names the icons using "snake_case" naming (for example delete_forever, add_a_photo), while @material-ui/icons exports the respective icons using "PascalCase" naming (for example DeleteForever, AddAPhoto). There are three exceptions to this naming rule: 3d_rotation exported as ThreeDRotation, 4k exported as FourK, and 360 exported as ThreeSixty.

Filled

Outlined

Rounded

Two Tone

Sharp

Edge-cases

SvgIcon

If you need a custom SVG icon (not available in Material Icons) you should use the SvgIcon wrapper. The SvgIcon component takes the SVG path element as its child and converts it to a React component that displays this SVG icon, and allows the icon to be styled and respond to mouse events. SVG elements should be scaled for a 24x24px viewport.

The resulting icon can be used as is, or included as a child for other Material-UI components that use icons. By default, an Icon will inherit the current text color. Optionally, you can set the icon color using one of the theme color properties: primary, secondary, action, error & disabled.

Libraries

Material Design (recommended)

Material Design has standardized over 1,000 official icons.

MDI

materialdesignicons.com provides over 2,000 icons. For the wanted icon, copy the SVG path they provide, and use it as the child of the SvgIcon component.

Note: mdi-material-ui has already wrapped each of these SVG icons with the SvgIcon component, so you don't have to do it yourself.

Icon (Font icons)

The Icon component will display an icon from any icon font that supports ligatures. As a prerequisite, you must include one, such as the Material icon font in your project, for instance, via Google Web Fonts:

<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/icon?family=Material+Icons" />

Icon will set the correct class name for the Material icon font. For other fonts, you must supply the class name using the Icon component's className property.

To use an icon simply wrap the icon name (font ligature) with the Icon component, for example:

import Icon from '@material-ui/core/Icon';

<Icon>star</Icon>

By default, an Icon will inherit the current text color. Optionally, you can set the icon color using one of the theme color properties: primary, secondary, action, error & disabled.

Font Material icons

<Icon>add_circle</Icon>
<Icon color="primary">add_circle</Icon>
<Icon color="secondary">add_circle</Icon>
<Icon color="action">add_circle</Icon>
<Icon className={classes.iconHover} color="error" style={{ fontSize: 30 }}>
  add_circle
</Icon>
<Icon color="disabled" fontSize="large">
  add_circle
</Icon>

Font Awesome

Font Awesome can be used with the Icon component as follow:

<Icon className="fa fa-plus-circle" />
<Icon className="fa fa-plus-circle" color="primary" />
<Icon className="fa fa-plus-circle" color="secondary" />
<Icon className="fa fa-plus-circle" color="action" />
<Icon
  className={clsx(classes.iconHover, 'fa fa-plus-circle')}
  color="error"
  style={{ fontSize: 30 }}
/>
<Icon className="fa fa-plus-circle" color="disabled" fontSize="large" />

Font vs SVG. Which approach to use?

Both approaches work fine, however, there are some subtle differences, especially in terms of performance and rendering quality. Whenever possible SVG is preferred as it allows code splitting, supports more icons, renders faster and better.

For more details, you can check out why GitHub migrated from font icons to SVG icons.

Accessibility

Icons can convey all sorts of meaningful information, so it’s important that they reach the largest amount of people possible. There are two use cases you’ll want to consider:

Decorative Icons are only being used for visual or branding reinforcement. If they were removed from the page, users would still understand and be able to use your page.
Semantic Icons are ones that you’re using to convey meaning, rather than just pure decoration. This includes icons without text next to them used as interactive controls — buttons, form elements, toggles, etc.

Decorative SVG Icons

If your icons are purely decorative, you’re already done! The aria-hidden=true attribute is added so that your icons are properly accessible (invisible).

Semantic SVG Icons

If your icon has semantic meaning, all you need to do is throw in a titleAccess="meaning" property. The role="img" attribute and the <title> element are added so that your icons are properly accessible.

In the case of focusable interactive elements, like when used with an icon button, you can use the aria-label property:

import IconButton from '@material-ui/core/IconButton';
import SvgIcon from '@material-ui/core/SvgIcon';

// ...

<IconButton aria-label="delete">
  <SvgIcon>
    <path d="M20 12l-1.41-1.41L13 16.17V4h-2v12.17l-5.58-5.59L4 12l8 8 8-8z" />
  </SvgIcon>
</IconButton>

Decorative Font Icons