Top 3 Ways to Integrate Icons Into Rails Applications

Ruby on Rails offers a lot of customization options for web developers. With so many options, it can be hard to choose the best ones. Fortunately, there are three icon options that stand out when compared to the rest. If you use one of these three to integrate icons into your Rails applications, you will have great success.

Ruby on Rails offers a lot of customization options for web developers. With so many options, it can be hard to choose the best ones. Fortunately, there are three icon options that stand out when compared to the rest. If you use one of these three to integrate icons into your Rails applications, you will have great success.

Bootstrap Framework

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You can get access to countless glyphicons with Bootstrap. In order to access the icons, you need to install the Bootstrap Gem. You will then need to add a call to the CSS dependencies in the application.css file. Here is a guide that will walk you through it if you want to learn more: Installing Bootstrap in a Rails Application.

Font Awesome

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Font Awesome is a top choice for integrating icons into your Rails applications. The icons are completely free for commercial use and work well on both standard and Retina displays. The icons have infinite scalability so they look perfect on devices of various sizes, and they work with Bootstrap and other frameworks. The company offers a broad range of icons, including bells, address books, cameras, and calendars.

It is very easy to integrate Font Awesome icons with your Rails application. Use the Rails gem for the installation. Add the Font Awesome Gem to your Gemfile and run bundle. You will also need to add a call to the CSS files in your application.css file. After that you will be up and running with the various icons in no time at all.

Font Custom

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You can spruce up your current icons with Font Custom. Use this tool to adjust the color and size of your icon graphics. That way, you don’t have to recreate the icons every time you want to make changes. This will provide you with the freedom to play around with your icons so you can determine the color and style you like the best.

You can utilize this tool by adding the Font Custom gem to your project’s Gemfile. Then configure the gem and add a rake task. Import your current icons and generate the icon font files. Then check your changes.

This is much easier than tools used in the past, so definitely check it out.


Adding icons to your Rails applications doesn’t have to be hard. These three options make it incredibly simple. Choose one of the options and then move forward with your application.

Jordan Hudgens

Jordan Hudgens

I've been a software engineer for the past decade and have traveled the world building applications and training individuals on a wide variety of topics.


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