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Comment by ulrischa | Hacker News Reader

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

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...

https://lucide.dev/

I learned about this thanks to claude always using it.

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

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

It's used by 99% of slop websites because it's the go to of any LLM if not prompted to do otherwise.

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

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.

I really like https://phosphoricons.com/

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

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

https://www.flaticon.com/

Sadly not open source licensed

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.

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/

I agree with you on the license issue, don't really mind the descriptions being too verbose or SEO oriented though but that's personal taste.

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

https://tabler.io/icons

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

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.

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.

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

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.

famfamfam of course, the only set one will ever need

The GOAT. I remember when basically every page on the internet had one of these icons on.

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