How To Add Icons

You can place Font Awesome icons just about anywhere, and we’ve tried to make it so that icons will take on the characteristics and blend in with surrounding text naturally.

We’ll cover the basics of how to add icons to your project, shorthand class names for different icon styles, how to add icons to HTML, using icons aliases, and more!

Before You Get Started

Make sure you’ve:

• Set up Font Awesome in your project and know where you parked your tardis.

Basics

To add an icon, you need to know a few bits of information:

1. The shorthand class name for the style you want to use
2. The icon name, prefixed with fa- (meaning “Font Awesome” naturally!)
3. The shorthand class name for the family you want to use (Optional)

Families + Styles

There are four families of Font Awesome icons - each with a unique look, class name, and @font-face font-family. In Font Awesome Classic, Duotone, Sharp, and Sharp Duotone, there are four styles of Font Awesome icons. Here are some examples:

Classic Family

Style	Availability	Style class	font-weight	Looks like
Solid	Free Plan	fa-solid	900
Regular	Pro only	fa-regular	400
Light	Pro only	fa-light	300
Thin	Pro only	fa-thin	100

Duotone Family

Style	Availability	Style class	font-weight	Looks like
Solid	Pro only	fa-duotone fa-solid	900
Regular	Pro only	fa-duotone fa-regular	400
Light	Pro only	fa-duotone fa-light	300
Thin	Pro only	fa-duotone fa-thin	100

Sharp Family

Style	Availability	Style class	font-weight	Looks like
Solid	Pro only	fa-sharp fa-solid	900
Regular	Pro only	fa-sharp fa-regular	400
Light	Pro only	fa-sharp fa-light	300
Thin	Pro only	fa-sharp fa-thin	100

Sharp Duotone Family

Style	Availability	Style class	font-weight	Looks like
Solid	Pro only	fa-sharp-duotone fa-solid	900
Regular	Pro only	fa-sharp-duotone fa-regular	400
Light	Pro only	fa-sharp-duotone fa-light	300
Thin	Pro only	fa-sharp-duotone fa-thin	100

Brands Family

Style	Availability	Style class	font-weight	Looks like
Brands	Free Plan	fa-brands	400

Font Awesome Classic is Our Default Family

If you don’t specify a family class name, our styling toolkit will render icons in Font Awesome Classic, the original look and feel that’s always in style. But if you need to reference the Classic family, you can just add the fa-classic in your icon’s HTML class names. If you want to change any or all icons to use Sharp, just add fa-sharp in the same manner!

Add Icons to HTML

We designed Font Awesome for use with inline elements, and we recommend that you stick with a consistent element in your project. We recommend using <i> element with the Font Awesome CSS classes for the style class for the style of icon you want to use and the icon name class with the fa- prefix for the icon you want to use. Accessibility-minded folks may want to opt for the <span> element instead of <i>.

Here’s an example:

<!-- This example uses <i> element with:
1. the `fa-solid` style class for solid style
2. the `user` icon with the `fa-` prefix -->
<i class="fa-solid fa-user"></i>

<!-- Or you can use a <span> element, with classes applied in the same way -->
<span class="fa-solid fa-user"></span>

Setting Different Families + Styles

And here’s an example that references different styles and families of icons:

<!-- Classic family icons in available styles (Font Awesome Classic is the default) -->
<i class="fa-solid fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-regular fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-light fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-thin fa-user"></i>

<!-- You can also explicitly state the classic family like this -->
<i class="fa-classic fa-regular fa-user"></i>

<!-- Font Awesome Duotone family icon -->
<i class="fa-duotone fa-solid fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-duotone fa-regular fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-duotone fa-light fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-duotone fa-thin fa-user"></i>

<!-- Font Awesome Sharp family icons in available styles -->
<i class="fa-sharp fa-solid fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp fa-regular fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp fa-light fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp fa-thin fa-user"></i>

<!-- Font Awesome Sharp Duotone family icon -->
<i class="fa-sharp-duotone fa-solid fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp-duotone fa-regular fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp-duotone fa-light fa-user"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp-duotone fa-thin fa-user"></i>

<!-- a Brands icon -->
<i class="fa-brands fa-font-awesome"></i>

Stay on target with those CSS rules!

When using our SVG framework, remember that DOM elements with Font Awesome classes are replaced with injected <svg> elements by default. Be sure that your CSS rules target the right element.

Aliases

We’ve updated many of our icon names in Version 6 to make them more universal and consistent. But we wanted to make sure not to break your existing code, so we made aliases for renamed icons to allow them to work with either the old or new names.

And you can use the old or new name for styles as well. So you can still use fas, far, fal, fad, and fab. And we’ve also included older prefix versions for our new Thin style (fat) and new Sharp family of styles (Sharp Solid is fass while Sharp Regular is fasr).

<!-- All of these code snippets will render the same Solid icon thanks to aliases. -->
<i class="fa-solid fa-cutlery"></i>
<i class="fa-solid fa-utensils"></i>
<i class="fas fa-utensils"></i>

<!-- All of these code snippets will render the same Sharp Solid icon thanks to aliases. -->
<i class="fa-sharp fa-solid fa-times"></i>
<i class="fa-sharp fa-solid fa-close"></i>
<i class="fass fa-xmark"></i>

Alternate Ways to Add Icons

We also have many other ways to add Font Awesome icons, in case your situation calls for something specific:

When using Web Fonts

• Add icons using just CSS with pseudo-elements.

When using SVGs

• Use SVGs without JS using our SVG Sprites
• Bring-Your-Own style with our bare SVGs
• Use SVG symbols to improve performance with repeating icons
• Use an Icon’s Unicode value
• Use an Icon’s name