[FREE TOOL] 🐻 Digibear Icons — a manifest-based, cross-platform icon system
Source: Dev.to
I just published Digibear Icons — a free manifest‑based, cross‑platform icon system. It’s not “just another icon library”.
The concept is very simple but powerful:
Define your icons once in a manifest → generate everywhere.
Digibear is tool‑first (CLI + manifest & Figma plugin), works across web frameworks, native platforms, and design tools, and even lets you integrate your own custom icons (you don’t have to use our icons if you don’t want to).
One possible workflow
- Design in Figma using the Digibear Icons plugin.
- Export a manifest that contains all the icons you need.
- Give that manifest to developers (web, native, …).
- Developers scaffold code and generate icons for their platform using the manifest.
It’s 100 % free (personal & commercial), with optional sponsorships to keep it evolving and for those needing support (details at the bottom of this post).
🧩 Icons as a manifest (no tree‑shaking, fully portable)
Digibear is built around a single YAML icon manifest + a CLI.
You define all the icons you need in the manifest and generate everything from that for:
- Web frameworks
- Native platforms
- Design tools (Figma)
- Multiple formats (SVG, TS, SwiftUI, Compose, Flutter …)
No giant bundles. No guessing whether tree‑shaking will work or not.
You own the generated code and you can edit it.
🚀 CLI: from zero to portable icons in seconds
Install the CLI
npm install -g @digibeardev/icons-cli1️⃣ Scaffold your framework
dgbear scaffold -f react -v 1.0.0(Works for Qwik, React, Vue, Angular, Svelte, Solid, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose, Flutter …)
2️⃣ Pick the icons you need
dgbear add heart,star
dgbear add leaf,cactus fill,duotone- You can add multiple icons at once using commas, and the same applies to styles.
- More advanced power‑user patterns are in the GitHub README (link at the bottom of this post).
This updates your icon manifest, which can be shared across teams, repos, and even design tools.
3️⃣ Generate everything
dgbear genThat’s it. Icons are generated for all configured outputs.
Advanced features (themes, variants, icon groups, custom icons, multi‑platform outputs, manifest merging, etc.) can be found on the website and in the GitHub README.
🎨 The icon library
- 1 457 icons
- 3 styles: line / fill / duotone → 4 371 icons total
- Designed on a 24 px grid for consistency across platforms
You only bundle what you actually use.
🎨 Figma plugin (same manifest, same icons)
A Figma plugin uses the exact same manifest:
- One component set, icons as variants
- Easy variant switching
- Update icons anytime
- Import / export manifests
- Custom icons supported
This keeps design & code perfectly in sync.
🔗 Plugin link at the bottom 👇
🧩 Custom icons are first‑class citizens
You can add your own SVG icons directly to the manifest:
- They appear in the Figma plugin
- They generate correctly for all platforms
- They follow the same pipeline as built‑in icons
No “official vs custom” split. Details and guidelines are on the website and GitHub README (links below).
🤖 AI‑powered icon search
Icons are HB generated (Human Brain 🧠), tagged, described, and then embedded using an AI model to enable semantic search (by meaning, not just keywords).
⚠️ Quick note: Search may feel slow at times because everything currently runs on a single small Hetzner machine (website, API, AI search, CLI metadata, etc.). This is a budget constraint, not a design limitation. Upgrading infrastructure is one of the first things planned with more sponsorship support, which is why sponsorships directly help improve performance (more about that in the next section).
🐻 FREE, but community‑funded ❤️ (IMPORTANT)
Digibear Icons is:
- Free (for personal & commercial use)
- License‑free
- Not feature‑gated
Long‑term development, maintenance, and improvements depend on sponsorships. With enough support I can:
- Upgrade the infrastructure (higher sign‑up/sign‑in email caps, faster AI search, …)
- Add more icons
- Maintain wrappers across frameworks
- Improve the CLI, Figma plugin, and AI search
Without it, I’ll mainly maintain the stacks I personally use (Qwik, SwiftUI, Jetpack Compose) and the icon library won’t evolve much.
If Digibear Icons helps you, sponsoring (or even just sharing it) helps a ton 🐻 !
⭐ VIP sponsorships (for production users)
For 100 €/month or more, sponsors get VIP support, intended for individuals or companies using Digibear Icons in production.
VIP sponsors receive
- 📧 Direct support via email (VIPsupport@digibear.dev). Use the email associated with your sponsorship.
- Priority handling for questions, bugs, and integration issues
- Name or logo listed (on request) on:
- The Digibear Icons website
- The GitHub README
- Influence upcoming icon batches (requests aren’t guaranteed, but they’re always considered)
VIP sponsors are sorted by sponsorship amount (minimum 100 €/month). Higher‑paid VIPs are listed first on the website.
🛠️ Small infrastructure notes (for transparency)
As of 26 December 2025, because of budget restriction:
- Emails are sent via Resend’s free SMTP plan (100 emails/day → 3 000 /month). If sign‑up emails don’t arrive, trying again later usually works.
- Website, AI search, and services all run on a single low‑budget server.
I prefer being transparent about these limitations.
📎 Links (bottom of the post)
- GitHub repository & README: https://github.com/digibeardev/icons
- Official website: https://digibear.dev
- Figma plugin: https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1234567890/Digibear-Icons
- Sponsor page: https://digibear.dev/sponsor
- VIP support email: VIPsupport@digibear.dev
Thank you for checking out Digibear Icons! 🎉
🔗 Links, full docs & advanced usage
🌍 Website
📦 CLI
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@digibeardev/icons-cli
📦 Web core library
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@digibeardev/icons-core
📚 CLI documentation (full manifest & advanced usage)
https://github.com/digibearapp/icons-cli
🎨 Figma plugin
https://www.figma.com/community/plugin/1584910839032205037/digibear-icons
Thanks for reading and thanks for any support you might give ❤️!
Even sharing Digibear Icons or giving feedback helps more than you might think.
I’ll be happy to answer questions, get feedback, and see what you build with Digibear Icons 🐻!