FontAwesome Icons

Flarum uses FontAwesome for icons throughout the interface. By default the Free tier is bundled with Flarum and served from your own server. You can switch to a CDN-hosted stylesheet or a FontAwesome Kit to unlock Pro icons, custom icons, and other features.

The active source can be changed from the admin dashboard (Admin → Advanced) or directly in config.php.

Sources

Local (default)

Flarum ships FontAwesome Free and publishes the webfonts to public/assets/fonts/ during installation and whenever you run:

php flarum assets:publish

No external requests are made. Only the Free icon set is available (fas, far, fab).

This is the recommended default for most installations.

After upgrading Flarum

If you upgrade Flarum and the new release ships a different FontAwesome version, old font files in public/assets/fonts/ are not automatically removed. Clear the directory and re-publish:

rm -rf public/assets/fonts
php flarum assets:publish

CDN

Load FontAwesome from a third-party CDN by providing a CSS URL. This replaces the local stylesheet and webfonts entirely — no fonts are published to your server.

In config.php:

'fontawesome' => [
    'source' => 'cdn',
    'cdn_url' => 'https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/font-awesome/7.0.0/css/all.min.css',
],

You can point cdn_url at any compatible FontAwesome stylesheet, including Pro CSS files hosted on a private CDN.

Kit

A FontAwesome Kit is a personalised bundle configured on the FontAwesome website. Kits are loaded via a JavaScript snippet and unlock features not available with the Free tier:

• Pro icons — thousands of additional icons across Solid, Regular, Light, Thin, and Duotone styles
• Custom icons — upload your own SVGs and use them like any FA icon
• Icon uploads — manage icons directly from the FontAwesome dashboard

To use a Kit, create one at fontawesome.com/kits, then add the kit URL to config.php:

'fontawesome' => [
    'source' => 'kit',
    'kit_url' => 'https://kit.fontawesome.com/YOUR_KIT_CODE.js',
],

The kit URL can be found on your kit's page in the FontAwesome dashboard.

caution

Kit scripts are loaded from FontAwesome's servers. This means user browsers will make a request to kit.fontawesome.com on every page load. If you have strict data-residency requirements, use the CDN or Local source instead.

Icon Class Names

Flarum uses FontAwesome 7. Icon classes follow the {style} {icon} pattern:

Style	FA7 class	Legacy alias (also valid)
Solid	fa-solid fa-house	fas fa-house
Regular	fa-regular fa-envelope	far fa-envelope
Brands	fa-brands fa-github	fab fa-github
Light (Pro)	fa-light fa-house	fal fa-house
Thin (Pro)	fa-thin fa-house	fat fa-house
Duotone (Pro)	fa-duotone fa-house	fad fa-house

The legacy shorthand aliases (fas, far, fab, etc.) are fully supported and do not need to be changed. New code may use either style.

Browse the free icon catalogue at fontawesome.com/icons.

Renamed Icons in FA7

FontAwesome 7 renamed a number of icons. The old names continue to work via CSS aliases that FA7 ships, so nothing breaks. However, if you are writing new code or updating an existing extension you should prefer the current canonical names.

The following FA5/FA6 icon names used in Flarum core and bundled extensions have been renamed in FA7:

Old name (FA5/FA6)	FA7 canonical name
fa-cog	fa-gear
fa-edit	fa-pen-to-square
fa-ellipsis-h	fa-ellipsis
fa-exclamation-triangle	fa-triangle-exclamation
fa-file-alt	fa-file-lines
fa-search	fa-magnifying-glass
fa-sync / fa-sync-alt	fa-arrows-rotate / fa-rotate
fa-times	fa-xmark
fa-times-circle	fa-circle-xmark
fa-trash-alt	fa-trash-can
fa-user-edit	fa-user-pen
fa-vote-yea	fa-check-to-slot

The style prefix (fas, far, etc.) is unchanged for all of the above.

For the full list of changes, see the FontAwesome upgrade guide.

Extension Development

When registering an icon from an extension (e.g. in composer.json or a settings registration), use the full class string:

"icon": "fas fa-puzzle-piece"

Extensions do not need to bundle FontAwesome themselves — it is provided by Flarum core and available on every page.