@fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome

react-native-fontawesome

Font Awesome React Native component using SVG with JS

• Introduction
  • Upgrading Font Awesome?
  • Get started
  • Learn about our new SVG implementation
• Installation
• Add more styles or Pro icons
• or with Yarn
• Usage
  • Explicit Import
  • Build a Library to Reference Icons Throughout Your App More Conveniently
  • Color
    • Color Prop
    • Change Color with a StyleSheet
  • Size
• Features
  • Duotone
  • Masking
  • Power Transforms
• Frequent questions
  • How do I import the same icon from two different styles?
  • I don't think tree-shaking is working; got any advice?
• How to Help
• Contributors

Introduction

Hey there! We're glad you're here...

Upgrading Font Awesome?

If you've used Font Awesome in the past (version 5 or older) there are some things that you should learn before you dive in.

https://fontawesome.com/v6/docs/web/setup/upgrade/

Get started

This package is for integrating with React Native. If you aren't using React Native then it's not going to help you. Head over to our "Get Started" page for some guidance.

https://fontawesome.com/v6/docs/web/setup/quick-start

Learn about our new SVG implementation

This package, under the hood, uses SVG with JS and the @fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core library. This implementation differs drastically from the web fonts implementation that was used in version 4 and older of Font Awesome. You might head over there to learn about how it works.

https://fontawesome.com/v6/docs/web/dig-deeper/svg-core

Installation

$ npm i --save react-native-svg # **
$ npm i --save @fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core
$ npm i --save @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons
$ npm i --save @fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome

** create-react-native-app uses Expo, which bundles react-native-svg. So if you're using create-react-native-app you shouldn't try to add react-native-svg. At the time of writing, create-react-native-app bundles react-native-svg version 6, which does not include support for SVG features such as Mask. In order to make use of Mask, make sure your dependencies have react-native-svg 7. The example app in this repo demonstrates.

If you are using a bare react-native-cli project, run the following command to complete the setup on iOS.

$ cd ios && pod install

Add more styles or Pro icons

Brands are separated into their own style and for customers upgrading from version 4 to 5 we have a limited number of Regular icons available.

Visit fontawesome.com/icons to search for free and Pro icons

$ npm i --save @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons
$ npm i --save @fortawesome/free-regular-svg-icons

If you are a Font Awesome Pro subscriber you can install Pro packages; this requires additional configuration.

$ npm i --save @fortawesome/pro-solid-svg-icons
$ npm i --save @fortawesome/pro-regular-svg-icons
$ npm i --save @fortawesome/pro-light-svg-icons

If you'd like to use Duotone icons, you'll need to add Duotone package:

$ npm i --save @fortawesome/pro-duotone-svg-icons

or with Yarn

$ yarn add @fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core
$ yarn add @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons
$ yarn add @fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome

Usage

You can use Font Awesome icons in your React Native components as simply as this:

<FontAwesomeIcon icon="mug-saucer" />

That simple usage is made possible when you add the "mug-saucer" icon, to the library.

This is one of the two ways you can use Font Awesome with React Native. We'll summarize both ways briefly and then get into the details of each below.

1. Explicit Import

   Allows icons to be subsetted, optimizing your final bundle. Only the icons you import are included in the bundle. However, explicitly importing icons into each of many components in your app might become tedious, so you may want to build a library.

2. Build a Library

   Explicitly import icons just once in some init module. Then add them to the library. Then reference any of them by icon name as a string from any component. No need to import the icons into each component once they're in the library.

Explicit Import

For this example, we'll also reference the @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons module, so make sure you've added it to the project as well:

$ npm i --save @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons

or

$ yarn add @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons

Now, a simple React Native component might look like this:

import React, { Component } from 'react'
import { View } from 'react-native'
import { FontAwesomeIcon } from '@fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome'
import { faMugSaucer } from '@fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons/faMugSaucer'

type Props = {}
export default class App extends Component<Props> {
  render() {
    return (
      <View>
        <FontAwesomeIcon icon={ faMugSaucer } />
      </View>
    )
  }
}

Notice that the faMugSaucer icon is imported from @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons/faMugSaucer as an object and then provided to the icon prop as an object.

Explicitly importing icons like this allows us to subset Font Awesome's thousands of icons to include only those you use in your final bundled file.

Build a Library to Reference Icons Throughout Your App More Conveniently

You probably want to use our icons in more than one component in your app, right?

But with explicit importing, it could become tedious to import into each of your app's components every icon you want to reference in that component.

So, add them to the library. Do this setup once in some initializing module of your app, adding all of the icons you'll use in your app's React components.

Suppose App.js initializes my app, including the library. For this example, we'll add two individual icons, faSquareCheck and faMugSaucer. We also add all of the brands in @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons. This example would illustrate the benefits of building a library even more clearly if it involved fifty or a hundred icons, but we'll keep the example brief and leave it to your imagination as to how this might scale up with lots of icons.

Don't forget to add @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons:

$ npm i --save @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons

or

$ yarn add @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons

In App.js, where our app is initialized:

// ...
import { library } from '@fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core'
import { fab } from '@fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons'
import { faSquareCheck } from '@fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons/faSquareCheck'
import { faMugEmpty } from '@fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons/faMugEmpty'

library.add(fab, faSquareCheck, faMugSaucer)

OK, so what's happening here?

In our call to library.add() we're passing

• fab: which represents all of the brand icons in @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons. So any of the brand icons in that package may be referenced by icon name as a string anywhere else in our app. For example: "apple", "microsoft", or "google".
• faSquareCheck and faMugSaucer: Adding each of these icons individually allows us to refer to them throughout our app by their icon string names, "square-check" and "mug-saucer", respectively.

Now, suppose you also have React Native components Beverage and Gadget in your app. You don't have to re-import your icons into them. Just import the FontAwesomeIcon component, and when you use it, supply the icon prop an icon name as a string.

We'll make Beverage.js a functional component:

import React from 'react'
import { View, Text } from 'react-native'
import { FontAwesomeIcon } from '@fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome'

export const Beverage = () => (
  <View>
    <FontAwesomeIcon icon="square-check" />
    <Text>Favorite beverage: </Text><FontAwesomeIcon icon="mug-saucer" />
  </View>
)

There's one another piece of magic that's happening in the background when providing icon names as strings like this: the fas prefix (for Font Awesome Solid) is being inferred as the default. Later, we'll look at what that means and how we can do something different than the default.

Now suppose Gadget.js looks like this:

import React from 'react'
import { View, Text } from 'react-native'
import { FontAwesomeIcon } from '@fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome'

export const Gadget = () => (
  <View>
    <FontAwesomeIcon icon="square-check" />
    <Text>Popular gadgets come from vendors like:</Text>
    <FontAwesomeIcon icon={['fab', 'apple']} />
    <FontAwesomeIcon icon={['fab', 'microsoft']} />
    <FontAwesomeIcon icon={['fab', 'google']} />
  </View>
)

Notice:

• We used the "square-check" icon name again in this component, though we didn't have to explicitly import it into this component. With one explicit import of that icon in App.js, and adding it to the library, we've managed to use it by name in multiple components.
• We used the "apple", "microsoft", and "google" brand icons, which were never explicitly individually imported, but they're available to us by name as strings because fab was added to our library in App.js, and fab includes all of those icons.
• We added the fab prefix to reference those brand icons.

Adding a prefix—and the syntax we used to do it—are new. So what's going on here?

First, recall when we introduced <FontAwesomeIcon icon="mug-saucer"/> and learned that a prefix of fas was being added to "mug-saucer" by default.

The "square-check" icon is getting a default prefix of fas here too, which is what we want, because that icon also lives in the @fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons package.

However, the "apple", "microsoft", and "google" brand icons live in the package @fortawesome/free-brands-svg-icons. So we need to specify a different prefix for them—not the default fas, but fab, for Font Awesome Brand.

When specifying a prefix with an icon name, both are given as strings.

Now, what about that syntax?

The icon prop expects a single object:

• It could be an icon object, like {faMugSaucer}.
• It could a string object, like "mug-saucer". (The curly braces around a string object supplied to a prop are optional, so we've omitted them.)
• Or it could be an Array of strings, where the first element is a prefix, and the second element is the icon name: {["fab", "apple"]}

Color

Priority: The color prop takes priority over setting color via StyleSheet. So if you end up with both set, the prop wins.

In fact, when provided a style object (suppose you've declared other style properties other than color), if the color prop has been specified, then any color property on the style object is removed before the style object is passed through to the underlying SVG rendering library. This is to avoid ambiguity.

Using the color prop should be preferred over using the StyleSheet.

Color Prop

  <FontAwesomeIcon icon={ faMugSaucer } color={ 'red' } />

Color StyleSheet property

To set the color of an icon, provide a StyleSheet like this:

import React, { Component } from 'react'
import { View, StyleSheet } from 'react-native'
import { FontAwesomeIcon } from '@fortawesome/react-native-fontawesome'
import { faMugSaucer } from '@fortawesome/free-solid-svg-icons/faMugSaucer'

type Props = {}

const style = StyleSheet.create({
  icon: {
    color: 'blue'
  }
})

export default class App extends Component<Props> {
  render() {
    return (
      <View>
        <FontAwesomeIcon icon={ faMugSaucer } style={ style.icon } />
      </View>
    )
  }
}

Size

Default: 16

To adjust the size, use the size prop:

<FontAwesomeIcon icon={ faMugSaucer } size={ 32 } />

Note: the height and width props have been deprecated.

Features

Duotone

<FontAwesomeIcon icon="mug-saucer" color="blue" secondaryColor="red" secondaryOpacity={ 0.4 } />

You can specify the color and opacity for Duotone's secondary layer using the secondaryColor and secondaryOpacity props. Note that these are optional, and will simply default to using your primary color at 40% opacity.

Masking

<FontAwesomeIcon icon="mug-saucer" mask={['far', 'circle']} />

More on masking...

Power Transforms

<FontAwesomeIcon icon="arrows-up-down-left-right" transform="shrink-6 left-4" />
<FontAwesomeIcon icon="arrow-right" transform={{ rotate: 42 }} />

More on power transforms...

Frequent questions

How do I import the same icon from two different styles?

With ES modules and import statements we can rename:

import { library } from '@fortawesome/fontawesome-svg-core'
import { faStroopwafel as fasFaStroopwafel } from '@fortawesome/pro-solid-svg-icons/faStroopwafel'
import { faStroopwafel as farFaStroopwafel } from '@fortawesome/pro-regular-svg-icons/faStroopwafel'

library.add(fasFaStroopwafel, farFaStroopwafel)

I don't think tree-shaking is working; got any advice?

Check out our docs here.

If you find that your build times are taking forever, check the way that you are importing icons.

In past versions of react-native-fontawesome we've documented importing icons like this:

import { faStroopwafel } from '@fortawesome/pro-solid-svg-icons'

This can cause build times for your project to skyrocket because React Native is trying to tree shake. The Font Awesome packages are so large that we highly recommend that you avoid this.

Instead, use "deep imports" by default.

import { faStroopwafel } from '@fortawesome/pro-solid-svg-icons/faStroopwafel' // <- notice the additional module here?

By directly importing from the faStroopwafel.js module there is no additional work that tree shaking needs to do in order to reduce your bundle size.

How to Help

Review the following docs before diving in:

• CONTRIBUTING.md
• CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md

And then:

1. Check the existing issues and see if you can help!

Contributors

Community:

Name	GitHub
Dizy	@dizy
David Martin	@iamdavidmartin
Jeremey	@puremana
Michael Schonfeld	@schonfeld
Ádám Gólya	@golya
Font Awesome Team	@FortAwesome