You spend many hours a day staring at your programming environment. You may as well make it look good. Not just with a great theme, but with a good-looking icon pack too. For this blog post, we have selected 20 VS Code icon packs that will make your files and folders look so much better.
Here are the VS Code icon packs we'll cover:
With almost 20 million installs, Material Icon Theme is the most popular VS Code icon pack. As you can probably tell from its name, it adds Material Design icons to VS Code. You can customize the file and folder icon color by typing Materials Icon in the command palette. If you want another Material Design icon theme, Material Theme Icons is another option.
The second-most installed icon pack, vscode-icons is a big improvement on VS Code's original icon set. It also has the ability to customize icons if you don't like a particular one. Install it directly from the command palette with ext install vscode-icons.
Monokai Pro is more than just an icon pack. It's also a color scheme and customized user interface theme. Available both for Sublime and VS Code, the extension has been designed by the author of the original Monokai colors. The goal of Monokai Pro is to help you focus on your code.
VSCode Great Icons is one of the most popular VS Code icon packs with over 1.5 million installs. It has well over two hundred icons for your files, and reviewers love that its icons are big, clean, and minimalistic.
A unique icon pack with over a million installs, file-icons has a vast array of icons for most languages and frameworks that come either colored or non-colored. Install this icon pack for better visual grepping.
The Nomo Dark Icon Theme provides a clean and nicely spaced set of icons. With over half a million installs, Nomo Dark is popular, well-reviewed, and especially great if you program in dark mode (as most software engineers do).
When you choose an icon pack, you don't want it to be too busy. It should find the right balance between being easy to understand and good-looking. Icons finds that balance. It has clear icons with gentle colors that make it easy to understand which file or folder is which.
With almost 200,000 installs, seti-icons is a popular and well-liked VS Code icon pack. This icon pack doesn't try anything out of the ordinary. It's clean and easy to grok, so you can focus while easily navigating the files and folders of your programming environment.
Studio Icons provides you with the official icons of the Visual Studio Image Library, but color-optimized for light, dark, and high contrast themes. So it's a versatile icon pack that you can use even when you're switching themes.
Now here's a fun one. Bearded Icons is the perfect icon pack if you want to add some character to your programming environment. Its vivid colors and unique style make this an icon pack that will separate your programming environment from everyone else's.
The City Lights Icon package is part of a suite of beautiful matte dark themed goodies for Visual Studio Code. But that doesn't mean you have to use the City Lights theme. You can use this subtle, elegant icon pack on its own and combine it with whatever theme you want.
Symbols is a simple file icon theme for VS Code with over eighty thousand installs that manages to set itself apart from other icon packs with its slick and relaxed style. The icon pack works well for both light and dark themes.
Sweet vscode Icons is a colorful VS Code icon set that has a synth/cyberpunk vibe. It's based on Quill Icons, which in itself is based on Feather Icons, both of which are also interesting icon packs to check out.
JetBrains Icon Theme uses, you guessed it, JetBrains' IntelliJ product icons. So if you're in that Java/Kotlin/JVM ecosystem, this may be the icon pack for you. Especially great if you're migrating from IntelliJ to VS Code.
Seedling Icon Theme is a simple icon theme with muted colors and small, but clear icons. You can install this icon pack extension with the folder icon or without, in which case you'll see arrows instead of a folder icon.
Another fun one. Emoji File Icons uses emojis for your files and folders. It's an icon pack that will make you stand out from all those engineers who rely on Material Design icons. Everyone uses emojis nowadays; why not lean into it?
Sharply different from the previous entry on this list, Keen neutral icon theme is perfect for the minimalists among us. No visual noise and no distractions. Clean, simple icons that work both in light and dark mode.
GitHub may have deprecated Atom late 2022, but that doesn't mean its icons are forever gone. The Atom Material Icons pack brings Atom's file icons to VS Code. If you previously used Atom, this one's for you.
If you're a gamer, this one's worth investigating. The Stardew Icon Theme is an icon pack inspired by indie classic Stardew Valley. It has an autumn mode and a beautiful, frosty winter mode with icons that are unlike any other VS Code icon pack.
We saved the best for last. Cage Icons is a list of icons based on the legendary actor Nicolas Cage. While we don't recommend this icon pack as your daily driver, it's a great one to install on your friend's programming environment when they're not looking. Serves them right for keeping their IDE open and unprotected.
Would you like to work with some of the biggest brands in the world, from Coinbase to Riot Games, on a fully remote basis? You can! X-Team is always looking for experienced software engineers who want to work with our awesome clients. Create a profile on our Jobs Platform and browse the roles we have available today.