Iconfinder - the best icon search engine

Iconfinder is an icon station of a search engine. The website owner claims that it is the best icon search engine.

The search is based on a tag system. Each icon has tags. Each search will match the tagged icons. Anyone can edit the tags to make them more relevant to the icon itself.

For software or Web interface designers, incorporating a set of beautiful and appropriate icons into their designs not only makes the UI look more lively and vivid, but also enhances the user experience. There are abundant free-to-use icon resources available online, but finding them can be quite difficult. Iconfinder is a search engine dedicated to icons; through it, you can quickly find the icons you need.

Iconfinder clearly draws inspiration from Google's minimalist style in its design. When you open its homepage, there's nothing but a search box. But don't underestimate this little box; through it, you can quickly find countless beautiful icons. The most exciting thing is that these icons are released under CC GPL or LGPL licenses, so we can freely apply them to our own works without worrying about copyright issues.

Iconfinder uses a feature in its search box similar to Google's "search suggestions," providing real-time prompts for similar keywords and matching results using Ajax technology. Iconfinder's output supports filtering by format. By default, it outputs all sizes of icons from 12*12 to 128*128. Of course, users can filter to obtain icons of specific sizes by clicking Select Icon Size at the top right, which is very convenient.

I tried downloading a few icons from Iconfinder and found that the icons provided are mostly PNG format icons with transparent backgrounds, which is very convenient for us to use. Transparent PNG images can be easily modified into the styles we need, and can also be conveniently converted into transparent background ICO icons through software like IconFactory Workshop. For designers, there won't be any obstacles when using them.

In essence, Iconfinder is also a form of vertical information search, but Iconfinder has chosen a very unique market entry point. For popular search engines (such as Google and Baidu), searching for specific formats of detailed information like icons is basically a blind spot. Even if we use the format filetype:png keywords in image searches, it is still difficult to find the icons we need. Iconfinder cleverly meets this demand. However, Iconfinder mainly targets designers, which is a smaller audience. Therefore, I think such sites should take a high-quality route in development. If it could collaborate with excellent resources like deviantArt and Iconbuffet to improve the quality of icons, I believe Iconfinder will become an indispensable website in the bookmarks of designers.