Where can one find free software icons / images?

Question

This may not be directly related to programming, but I always find it hard to get quality icons that can be used for software.

I currently have the need for some type of "green checkmark image", and I always seem to be looking for print, save, delete types of icons...

Anybody have good resources?

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Note: I rather not be stealing someone's intellectual property.

Answer 1

Update:

You can use Icon Finder to search or browse through more than 100,000 icons.

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Original answer:

I really like the Silk Icon set. It's available under a Creative Commons Attribution License. Here are a few examples.

Also see Silk Companion 1, "fuelled by a need for a additional icons and variations in the same format."

Both of these sets are under Creative Commons license, so attribution is required.

Answer 2

http://www.webresourcesdepot.com/ is a GREAT resource for amazing icons!!

Its currently down right now, but when it comes back up, search for Icons in the search bar.

EDIT: Search for web 2.0 on the site.

Answer 3

deviantArt usually has quite a few.

Answer 4

IconBuffet?

Answer 5

iconfinder has a great search for GPL, GNU, and Creative Commons icons.

Answer 6

BlueSphere Icon

Answer 7

For stockphotos: sxc.hu
Tons of pictures and 90% of them are free for commercial use.

Also, on Flickr's Advanced Search you can search for images, that are under CreativeCommons and free for commercial use.

Answer 8

I'd like to post this as a comment, though I'm not capable (yet) to do so, so I post this pseudo-answer.

Could you please reformulate your question, avoiding usage of the word "free"? What exactly do you want?

• Cost-less images you can pick up? Beware: the author may have explicitely said in the license "free for non commercial use" or the like!
• Or images/icons created under a permissive license that allow you to use such images everywhere?

Answer 9

• WebAppers icon section
  This is a regularly updated section, so subscribe to the RSS feed to get the latest updates.
  
  
• Smashing Magazine icons
• Smashing Magazine: 35 (Really) Incredible Free Icon Sets
• Smashing Magazine: 55 Free High Quality Icon Sets

Answer 10

VistaIcons.com has a big collection of free 256x256 icons. I've used them for a small project of mine and they look really good.

Answer 11

What I've found helpful is to combine professionally drawn icons using Axialis Icon Workshop: http://www.axialis.com/iconworkshop/

It's not free, but it's inexpensive and get lifetime upgrades (and there's a 30 day free trial.) And it comes with lots of icons in it's own library. And you can easily combine icons (e.g., combine a "not" sign and microphone for a mute symbol, etc.). I combined a talking bubble and a stopwatch for our program "speechpacer"

I have no relationship w/ the company other than being a very satisfied customer.

Answer 12

This blog has an extensive list of free icons, with descriptions of their license agreements:

http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/

Answer 13

I don't know if someone already mentioned it but there are the tango icons

They are released under a Creative Commons license

Answer 14

glyFX is a great source for Windows XP and Vista style icons. Check out the free sets that are available especially the XP and Vista common sets

Answer 15

More free icons:

• http://www.hiddenpixels.com/designer-and-developer-resources/free-icons/
• http://www.hiddenpixels.com/designer-and-developer-resources/free-web-icons/

Answer 16

Browse through linux icon sets. Some great stuff can be found there - and they are almost always available in GPL or LGPL license.

KDE Icons

Gnome Icons

Answer 17

See also http://stackoverflow.com/questions/233384/where-are-good-sites-for-free-images-that-developers-can-use-in-applications

Answer 18

If you have Visual Studio 2005 installed, it installs a library of standard windows bitmaps, cursors and icons. You can find the zip file here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 8\Common7\VS2005ImageLibrary\VS2005ImageLibrary.zip

Answer 19

Nuvola is pretty good: http://www.icon-king.com/projects/nuvola/

Some samples: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuvola

Answer 20

I found this on Digg:

http://sixrevisions.com/resources/40-beautiful-free-icon-sets/

Answer 21

http://dryicons.com/free-icons/

Answer 22

I also found these: http://prothemedesign.com/free-webdesign-tools/circular-icons/

Answer 23

These are two links you may find useful:

• famfamfam (Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License)
• sweetie (Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 License)

Both of them are icon collections licensed under some sort of Creative Commons License and are suitable for commercial applications.

Answer 24

this is available if you use Visual Studio - i think the express version may come with too

http://blogs.msdn.com/saraford/archive/2008/11/25/did-you-know-visual-studio-comes-with-an-image-library-for-you-to-use-in-your-applications-363.aspx

Answer 25

I've used some icons from dryicons.

Answer 26

Images under LGPL:

http://www.lostpedia.com/wiki/Category:LGPL_images

DESCRIPTION: http://www.icon-king.com

NUVOLA is an SVG based icon theme. This mean that all icons where designed with a vector graphics application and SVG files are available. Icons of the KDE version of Nuvola are PNG images (unscalable). SVG files are available at www.icon-king.com from the day 15 may 2004.

LICENSE

Graphics from both links above are released under GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) which means that you can use it even in Commercial Software.

Answer 27

I bookmarked these sites long ago, I hope they are still relevent

http://www.maxpower.ca/free-icons/2006/03/05/

http://www.intersmash.com/300images/

http://www.codeandcoffee.com/2007/06/26/free-stock-icons-for-your-next-application/

http://www.technacular.com/2007/02/12/collection-of-sites-providing-free-web-icons-and-buttons/

Hope it helps

Answer 28

Fugue (Creative Commons Attribution) $50 to remove the license

Answer 29

http://tango.freedesktop.org/Tango_Desktop_Project

CC Attribution Share Alike license (some parts are public domain)

Answer 30

Wikimedia Commons contains a number of icon sets available under free licenses (allowed to create derivative works, and allowed to use for commercial use). The license may be public domain, GPL, LGPL, CC-BY or CC-BY-SA, but the license for each is clearly stated on the image page.

Have a bit of a browse around... there is a lot of stuff there, but sometimes it 's not easy to find.

Answer 31

There's iconfinder.

Each icon in there has it's own license, so I can't really state just one. But most of them are under LGPL or a some variant of the CC license. Before downloading any of the icons, you have to check it's license yourself.

Answer 32

deviantArt.com has a category for icons:

http://browse.deviantart.com/customization/icons/os/?order=9

Answer 33

http://www.openclipart.org Huge collection of user generated icons and graphics. CC, LGPL, GPL, PD, whatever

www.vecteezy.com Free vector art, more art than icons or buttons, CC, GPL, PD

Answer 34

deviantART OS Icons

Answer 35

Try www.deviantart.com

;)

Answer 36

Try these ones:

http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/07/02/55-free-high-quality-icon-sets/

Answer 37

Here is a large set of creative commons licensed icons of various tyes and styles that I stumbled onto recently.

Answer 38

iconarchive.com

iconshock.com (you can download samples, read their license)

Answer 39

The Silk icon set from famfamfam.com is used by Mindtouch's Dekiwiki.
Another one is Tango from FreeDesktop and is used by Ubunutu for instance.

Both are licensed under CreativeCommons

Ton

Answer 40

Check out:

• Knob Buttons Toolbar icons.
• Big list of icon sites
• Iconaholic

Answer 41

Recently Dugg: 50 of the best Web and App icon sets

Answer 42

Leverage other people's knowledge of sites using delicious.

Answer 43

See also: Silk Companion Icons.

Answer 44

I have been watching the Picol icon set to see what happens, and where it goes. It looks interesting and is available for free. They have an online Icon library to peruse the icons they currently already have available!

Answer 45

I use www.iconfinder.net.

Answer 46

Smashing Magazine has regular free icon/vector/fonts postings - and a bunch of other cool stuff besides.

Answer 47

http://www.iconspedia.com/

Answer 48

If you are in Microsoft domain your first source for imagery would be the Visual Studio 2008 Image Library.

As you can see in Visual Studio 2008 Product Comparison Guide

the library is available in Standard Edition and higher.

It is located in C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 9.0\Common7\VS2008ImageLibrary

The icons are typical for desktop applications but I've made experience they look sweet on web pages too.

Answer 49

• Free Developer Icon Sets
• Icon Archive - 23,400+ free icons Public usage license can be found on each icon set page
• 111 Free Icon Packs
• icojoy free icons
• pinvoke - Icons and pixel fonts Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license
• freeiconsdownload.com: High Quality Royalty Free icons for Windows, Mac and Linux, Offers Ico,Gif,Bmp,Png various icons format.
• Vaga Free Icons
• Smashing Magazine: 35 (Really) Incredible Free Icon Sets
• User Interface Icons.com
• “Silk” is a smooth, free icon set, containing over 700 16-by-16 pixel icons Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License. This means you may use it for any purpose, and make any changes you like

Answer 50

iconshock.com (free and commercial)

Answer 51

50 of the Best Ever Web Development, Design and Application Icon Sets

http://speckyboy.com/2009/02/02/50-of-the-best-ever-web-development-design-and-application-icon-sets/

Answer 52

Smashing magazine periodically releases high qualify free icons. Go to http://www.smashingmagazine.com/category/freebies/ You'll have to read the description of each set, but most of them are free for both personal and commercial use

Sproutcore comes with some high quality icons, and the framework is under the very permissive MIT license. Even if you don't use the library, you should still be able to borrow its icons. See the icons tab under http://www.sproutcore.com/static/sample_controls/

Answer 53

Siena (free for both personal and commercial use if RSS subscriber)

http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/03/200-free-exclusive-icons-siena/

Answer 54

iconPot has a pretty small collection of really good quality free icons.

Answer 55

If you need filetype icons you can try http://stdicon.com .

(Disclaimer: I built it)

Answer 56

I have used http://www.webiconsets.com/ before and they have a small but good set of free icon packs that target websites. They have specialized packs for social media, payments, etc.

Answer 57

I have 64 free iPhone tab bar icons available on App-Bits.com.

Answer 58

I'm using http://dezignus.com/ there are many free great icons in good quality and web 2.0 style (free of course)

Answer 59

gnome-look.org

kde-look.org

Basically these are themes for both desktops. There are TONS of themes and each theme has many icons of many applications. There are also cursor themes etc. Be sure to check out the gtk themes as well. they are mostly GPL'd.

Answer 60

Iconza

Customizable icons for your web site. Totally free. Change size, colours, background and download.

Answer 61

Try IconArchiver and We Love Icons. These sites have really good icons.

Answer 62

The best site I found that offers free icons is http://www.iconfinder.com/

Answer 63

You might want to check this post. I listed some of the best icon search engines and icon catalogs.

Answer 64

I use those: http://p.yusukekamiyamane.com/

Answer 65

Am I the only one who uses interfacelift?

Answer 66

remember that most of the icons listed here are under some license. most license does not allow you to use them in commercial products except you buy a license. make sure you contact the owners before using in commercial software