Material Symbols

What Material Symbols is

Material Symbols is a free icon collection for websites, apps, and other projects. It contains more than 2,500 icons in a font, with Outlined, Rounded, and Sharp variable styles. The icons support fill, weight, grade, and optical-size adjustments. For web pages, Google provides a CSS web-font API snippet, and the font can also be self-hosted so users control when it is updated. Individual icons are available as SVG or PNG, with Android Vector Drawable and Apple Symbols formats also listed. The icons are licensed under Apache License Version 2.0, which permits incorporation, remixing, and redistribution, including commercial use. One web-font consideration is that default settings load more than 3,800 icons in a 295 KB payload; specifying icon names can reduce it. Only the 20 px and 24 px sizes are designed for pixel-grid alignment. The set has no two-tone icons or third-party logos, and Flutter support is planned.

Who it suits

Material Symbols suits designers and developers who need customizable icons for web, Android, or iOS projects. Its formats and license also suit projects that need to incorporate, modify, or redistribute icons commercially.

Limits

The free plan includes the icon collection under Apache License 2.0. Default web-font settings load more than 3,800 icons in a 295 KB payload, though specifying icon names can reduce it; only 20 px and 24 px versions are designed for perfect pixel-grid alignment.

Getting started

1. Open the Material Symbols website.
2. Choose icons from the library and download them as SVG or PNG, or use the available platform formats.
3. For web use, incorporate Google's CSS web-font API snippet or self-host the font.
4. Specify icon names in web-font settings to reduce the loaded payload.

Verdict

Material Symbols offers a broad icon set with adjustable styles and several download and integration formats. Developers using the web font can specify icon names to reduce the default payload.