Zed Icons

Guidelines

Icons are a big part of Zed, and they're how we convey hundreds of actions without relying on labeled buttons. When introducing a new icon, it's important to ensure consistency with the existing set, which follows these guidelines:

1. The SVG view box should be 16x16.
2. For outlined icons, use a 1.2px stroke width.
3. Not all icons are mathematically aligned; there's quite a bit of optical adjustment. However, try to keep the icon within an internal 12x12 bounding box as much as possible while ensuring proper visibility.
4. Use the filled and outlined terminology when introducing icons that will have these two variants.
5. Icons that are deeply contextual may have the feature context as their name prefix. For example, ToolWeb, ReplPlay, DebugStepInto, etc.
6. Avoid complex layer structures in the icon SVG, like clipping masks and similar elements. When the shape becomes too complex, we recommend running the SVG through SVGOMG to clean it up.

Sourcing

Most icons are created by sourcing them from Lucide. Then, they're modified, adjusted, cleaned up, and simplified depending on their use and overall fit with Zed.

Sometimes, we may use other sources like Phosphor, but we also design many icons completely from scratch.

Contributing

To introduce a new icon, add the .svg file to the assets/icon directory and then add its corresponding item to the icons.rs file within the crates directory.

• SVG files in the assets folder follow a snake_case name format.
• Icons in the icons.rs file follow the PascalCase name format.

Make sure to tag a member of Zed's design team so we can review and adjust any newly introduced icon.