QtMDi (Qt Material Design icons)

Copyright 2023 Yaroshenko Dmytro (https://github.com/o-murphy)

The extension for QtAwesome with the latest variable icon fonts for Material Symbols

(Python 3, PySide, PyQt)

[!NOTE] Fonts in this package automatically updated, so it will always have the latest icons from Google

[!NOTE] The package is publishing to PyPi automatically, so it can have issues in some releases

[!NOTE] The package uses QtAwesome as it's backend, so it support all the feature provided by QtAwesome, for more see the docs

• Installation
• Usage
• Supported Fonts
• Available Icons
• Development
• Known issues

Installation

QtMDi is built on QtAwesome and qtpy, which is just an abstraction layer over Qt bindings - it doesn't ship a Qt binding itself, so you need to install one (PyQt5, PySide2, PyQt6 or PySide6) alongside it:

pip install QtMDi PyQt6

Install the latest release from PyPi:

pip install QtMDi

Install the latest updated version from github:

pip install https://github.com/o-murphy/QtMDi

Using qtmdi-browser as a standalone tool

If you just want to run the icon browser (see Available Icons) without installing QtMDi into a project, use uv tool install (or pipx) with a Qt binding as an extra dependency:

uv tool install qtmdi --with pyqt6
# or
uv tool install qtmdi --with pyside6

qtmdi-browser

Usage

Supported Fonts

QtAwesome identifies icons by their prefix and their icon name, separated by a period (.) character.

The following prefixes are currently available to use:

• mds prefix has Google material design icons symbols style
• mdf prefix has Google material design icons variablefont style
• si prefix has Simple Icons brand/logo icons, e.g. qtawesome.icon("si.github")

Example

Import qtawesome and qtmdi in your python file:

import qtawesome
import qtmdi

Icon creation example

# basic rounded
qtawesome.icon("mds-rounded-base.home")

# rounded with 700 width
qtawesome.icon("mds-rounded-700.home")

# rounded with 400 width
qtawesome.icon("mds-sharp-400.home")

# basic variablefont ttf based icon
qtawesome.icon("mdf-sharp.home")

# simpleicons variablefont icon
qtawesome.icon("si.cplusplus")

Create an app

from qtpy import QtWidgets

class Example(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.lt = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout(self)
        self.btn = QtWidgets.QToolButton(self)
        self.btn.setIcon(
            qtawesome.icon("mds-rounded-700.home"),
        )
        self.btn.setFixedSize(48, 48)
        self.btn.setIconSize(32, 32)
        self.lt.addWidget(self.btn)

Load extension on your app instance

import sys
from qtpy import QtWidgets
import qtawesome
import qtmdi


# Create an app
class Example(QtWidgets.QMainWindow):
    def __init__(self):
        super().__init__()
        self.lt = QtWidgets.QVBoxLayout(self)
        self.btn = QtWidgets.QToolButton(self)
        self.btn.setIcon(
            qtawesome.icon("mds-rounded-700.home"),
        )
        self.btn.setFixedSize(48, 48)
        self.btn.setIconSize(32, 32)
        self.lt.addWidget(self.btn)
        
def run():
    app = QtWidgets.QApplication()
    
    # Load extension on your app instance
    qtmdi.load(app)
    
    qtawesome.dark(app)
    w = Example()
    w.show()
    sys.exit(app.exec_())
        
if __name__ == '__main__':    
    run()

[!NOTE] qtmdi.load(app) is lazy by default: it only registers which fonts are available, and reads/loads the actual font file the first time one of its icons is requested through qtawesome.icon(...). This keeps memory usage and startup time low when your app only ever uses a few styles/weights out of everything QtMDi ships.

Pass qtmdi.load(app, lazy=False) to load every shipped font immediately instead (this is what qtmdi-browser does, since it needs to list every icon right away).

If you know upfront exactly which fonts your app uses, restrict qtmdi to just those with load_only, e.g. qtmdi.load(app, load_only={"mds-rounded-700", "mdf"}). This works with both lazy (only those prefixes become loadable on demand) and lazy=False (only those prefixes get loaded immediately).

Available Icons

To see available icons run qtmdi-browser in your terminal

qtmdi-browser

Development

This project uses uv for dependency management and packaging.

Font binaries under src/qtmdi/icons and src/qtmdi/brands aren't committed to git (they're fetched fresh at build/CI time to keep the repo small) - after cloning, run the fetch scripts once to populate them locally. fetch_fonts.py downloads the Material Symbols variable fonts straight from Google's material-design-icons repository and generates the per-weight static files with fonttools; fetch_brand_icons.py downloads the Simple Icons font + metadata from its GitHub Releases. Neither needs npm/node/woff2:

# install dependencies (including dev tools)
uv sync

# fetch the fonts (one-time, or whenever you want the latest icons)
uv run python scripts/fetch_fonts.py
uv run python scripts/fetch_brand_icons.py
uv run python scripts/fix_font_families.py
uv run python scripts/create_symbols_charmap.py

# run the test suite
uv run pytest

# lint
uv run ruff check
uv run flake8 .

# launch the icon browser against your local checkout
uv run qtmdi-browser

Font binaries are refreshed automatically by the symbols-update workflow (via scripts/fetch_fonts.py and scripts/fetch_brand_icons.py), which also fixes the Material Symbols fonts' internal family names so weight/style selection resolves correctly in Qt (scripts/fix_font_families.py), regenerates icons/charmap.json (scripts/create_symbols_charmap.py), and writes manifest.json - a checksum of every font file, committed instead of the binaries themselves, so the workflow can tell whether the fonts actually changed and only cut a release when they did (scripts/write_font_manifest.py). You normally shouldn't need to touch any of these by hand.

Known issues

• Filled icons not shown as expected
• Grade property currently unsupported
• Optical size property currently unsupported

License

• MIT License. Copyright 2023 Yaroshenko Dmytro (https://github.com/o-murphy) See the LICENSE file for details.

Fonts bundled by QtMDi itself (mdf, mds, si)

• The Google material design icons fonts (mdf, mds) are licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0. A copy of the license, and a notice describing the modifications QtMDi makes to the shipped font files, are included at src/qtmdi/licenses/Apache-2.0-material-design-icons.txt and src/qtmdi/licenses/NOTICE-material-design-icons.txt - both are packaged with every install.

• The Simple Icons font (si) and its icon data are dedicated to the public domain under CC0 1.0; a copy is included at src/qtmdi/licenses/CC0-1.0-simple-icons.md.

Fonts available transitively through the QtAwesome dependency

QtMDi doesn't bundle the fonts below itself - they ship as part of the qtawesome package (a QtMDi dependency), which carries its own licensing for them; they're listed here only because QtMDi's load()/qtawesome.icon() gives you access to their prefixes too.

• The QtAwesome licensed under the MIT License. Copyright 2015 - The Spyder development team. See the LICENSE file for details.

• The Font Awesome and Elusive Icons fonts are licensed under the SIL Open Font License.

• The Phosphor font is licensed under the MIT License.

• The Material Design Icons font is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0.

• The Remix Icon font is licensed under the Apache License Version 2.0.

• Microsoft's Codicons are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License.