20 VS Code Icon Packs to Make Your Files Look Great

September 7, 2023 9 min read

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:

Material Icon Theme

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.

vscode-icons

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

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

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.

file-icons

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.

Nomo Dark Icon Theme

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).

Icons

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.

seti-icons

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

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.

Bearded Icons

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.

City Lights Icon package

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

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

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

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

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.

Emoji File Icons

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?

Keen neutral icon theme

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.

Atom Material Icons

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.

Stardew Icon Theme

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.

Cage Icons

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.

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