QtAwesome is a library to add Font Awesome icons to your Qt application.

• Latest Release 7
• Installation Free Version
• Installation Pro version
• Installation Pro Plus version
• Basic Usage
• Examples
• Example Custom Painter
• Default options
• Known Issues And Workarounds
• Thanks
• Contact
• License

Updated to Font Awesome 7 When using Pro+, the extra styles Chisel, Etch, Jelly, Notdog, Slab, Thumbprint and Whiteboard are available.

View changelog

Having troubles with this new release?

• The main branch contains the latest Font Awesome 7 version.
• The fontawesome-6 branch contains the Font Awesome 6 version
• The fontawesome-5 branch contains the Font Awesome 5 version.
• You can find the previous master branch in the fontawesome-4 branch. (master is dropped in favour of main)
• Open a github issue if you've found a bug or have a suggestion

You can include QtAweome to your project by copying the QtAwesome directory to your project tree and add the following include() to your Qt project file:

CONFIG+=fontAwesomeFree
include(QtAwesome/QtAwesome.pri)

Now you are good to go! The free fonts are included in this project.

To activate the pro version, fontAwesomePro config should be defined.

CONFIG+=fontAwesomePro
include(QtAwesome/QtAwesome.pri)

And the pro font files need to be copied to the QtAwesome/fonts/pro folder.

To activate the pro+ version, fontAwesomePro config should be defined.

CONFIG+=fontAwesomePro
include(QtAwesome/QtAwesome.pri)

Using the fontAwesomePro config, implies the definition of FONT_AWESOME_PRO, and FONT_AWESOME_PRO_PLUS)

Place the pro+ font files to the QtAwesome/fonts/pro folder.

Create a single QtAwesome object for your whole application.

fa::QtAwesome* awesome = new fa::QtAwesome(qApp)
awesome->initFontAwesome();     // This line is important as it loads the font and initializes the named icon map

• Add an accessor to this object (i.e. a global function, member of your application object, or whatever you like).
• Use an icon name from the Font Awesome Library.

Next the icons can be accessed via the awesome->icon method.

// The most performant operation the get an icon
QPushButton* btn = new QPushButton(awesome->icon(fa::fa_solid, fa::fa_wine_glass), "Cheers!");

// You can also use 'string' names to access the icons.
QPushButton* btn = new QPushButton(awesome->icon("fa-solid fa-coffee" ), "Black please!");

// The string items passed to the icon method  can be used without the 'fa-' prefix
QPushButton* btn = new QPushButton(awesome->icon("solid coffee" ), "Black please!");

// The style is also optional and will fallback to the 'solid' style
QPushButton* btn = new QPushButton(awesome->icon("coffee" ), "Black please!");

For shorter syntax (more Font Awesome like) is possible to bring the fa namespace into the current scope:

using namespace fa;
QPushButton* btn = new QPushButton(awesome->icon(fa_solid, fa_wine_glass), "Cheers!");

It is possible to create some extra options for the icons. The available options can be found in the Default options list

QVariantMap options;
options.insert("color" , QColor(255, 0 ,0));
QPushButton* musicButton = new QPushButton(awesome->icon(fa::fa_solid, fa::music, options), "Music");

The defaults option can also be adjusted via the setDefaultOption method. For example having green disabled icons, it is possible to call:

awesome->setDefaultOption("color-disabled", QColor(0, 255, 0));

It also possible to render a label directly with this font

QLabel* label = new QLabel(QChar(fa::fa_github));
label->setFont(awesome->font(fa::fa_brands, 16));

This example registers a custom painter for supporting an custom icon named 'duplicate' It simply draws 2 "plus marks".

class DuplicateIconPainter : public QtAwesomeIconPainter
{
public:
    virtual void paint(QtAwesome* awesome, QPainter* painter, const QRect& rectIn, QIcon::Mode mode, QIcon::State state, const QVariantMap& options)
    {
        int drawSize = qRound(rectIn.height() * 0.5);
        int offset = rectIn.height() / 4;
        QChar chr = QChar(static_cast<int>(fa::plus));
        int st = fa::fa_solid;

        painter->setFont(st, awesome->font(drawSize));

        painter->setPen(QColor(100,100,100));
        painter->drawText(QRect(QPoint(offset * 2, offset * 2),
                          QSize(drawSize, drawSize)), chr ,
                          QTextOption(Qt::AlignCenter|Qt::AlignVCenter));

        painter->setPen(QColor(50,50,50));
        painter->drawText(QRect(QPoint(rectIn.width() - drawSize-offset, rectIn.height() - drawSize - offset),
                                QSize(drawSize, drawSize) ), chr ,
                                QTextOption(Qt::AlignCenter | Qt::AlignVCenter));
    }
};

awesome->give("duplicate", new DuplicateIconPainter());

After this, this icon can be used with the given string name:

awesome->icon("duplicate")

The following options are the defaults in the QtAwesome class.

setDefaultOption("color", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Normal, QPalette::Text));
setDefaultOption("color-disabled", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Disabled, QPalette::Text));
setDefaultOption("color-active", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Active, QPalette::Text));
setDefaultOption("color-selected", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Active, QPalette::Text));

setDefaultOption("text", QString()); // internal option
setDefaultOption("text-disabled", QString());
setDefaultOption("text-active", QString());
setDefaultOption("text-selected", QString());

setDefaultOption("scale-factor", 0.9);

Extra items for the pro version

setDefaultOption("duotone-color", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Normal, QPalette::BrightText));
setDefaultOption("duotone-color-disabled", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Disabled, QPalette::BrightText));
setDefaultOption("duotone-color-active", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Active, QPalette::BrightText));
setDefaultOption("duotone-color-selected", QApplication::palette().color(QPalette::Active, QPalette::BrightText));

When creating an icon, it first populates the options map with the default options from the QtAwesome object. After that the options are expanded/overwritten by the options supplied to the icon.

It is possible to use another glyph per icon-state. For example to make an icon-unlock symbol switch to locked when selected, you could supply the following option:

options.insert("text-selected", QString(fa::fa_lock));

Color and text options have the following structure: keyname-iconmode-iconstate

When iconmode normal is empty
And iconstate on is blank

So the list of items used is:

• color
• color-disabled
• color-active
• color-selected
• color-off
• color-disabled-off
• color-active-off
• color-selected-off
• duotone-color (pro)
• duotone-color-disabled (pro)
• duotone-color-active (pro)
• duotone-color-selected (pro)
• duotone-color-off (pro)
• duotone-color-disabled-off (pro)
• duotone-color-active-off (pro)
• duotone-color-selected-off (pro)
• text
• text-disabled
• text-active
• text-selected
• text-off
• text-disabled-off
• text-active-off
• text-selected-off
• style
• style-disabled
• style-active
• style-selected
• style-off
• style-disabled-off
• style-active-off
• style-selected-off

On Mac OS X, placing an qtAwesome icon in QMainWindow menu, doesn't work directly. See the following issue: [#10]

A workaround for this problem is converting it to a Pixmap icon:

QAction* menuAction = new QAction("test");
menuAction->setIcon(awesome->icon(fa::fa_heart).pixmap(32,32));

Thanks go to the contributors of this project!

Many thanks go to Dave Gandy and the other Font Awesome contributors!! https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome And of course to the Qt team/contributors for supplying this great cross-platform c++ library.

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to fork and send a pull request through Github.

Contribution list made with contrib.rocks.

• email: rick@blommersit.nl
• mastedon: https://ruby.social/@rick
• twitter: https://twitter.com/gamecreature
• website: https://gamecreatures.com
• github: https://github.com/gamecreature/QtAwesome

MIT License. Copyright 2013-2025 - Ribit Software by Blommers IT. https://blommersit.nl/

The Font Awesome font is licensed under the SIL Open Font License - https://scripts.sil.org/OFL The Font Awesome pictograms are licensed under the CC BY 3.0 License - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ "Font Awesome by Dave Gandy - https://github.com/FortAwesome/Font-Awesome"