alt.hn

4/18/2026 at 3:44:54 AM

Show HN: Sfsym – Export Apple SF Symbols as Vector SVG/PDF/PNG

 https://github.com/yapstudios/sfsym

by olliewagner

4/18/2026 at 2:15:41 PM

> The default format is PDF.

Genuine question: what’s your use case for having a single SF Symbols icon as a PDF file? Let alone having that as the default? In my own experience, I’d want SVG nearly every time.

by rafram

4/18/2026 at 2:46:23 PM

You're right. Just flipped the default to SVG on main. Honest answer: SVG wasn't fully working during early dev, so PDF was the working default and it stuck. Should've revisited.

by olliewagner

4/19/2026 at 9:52:46 PM

clever hack reaching into the private ivar. curious if this holds up across macos updates or if apple has been stable with NSSymbolImageRep. also, is the main value here batch exports or is it specifically for letting agents grab icons without the gui

by paolatauru

4/18/2026 at 12:19:01 PM

But these are copyright by Apple so are you allowed to use them on your commercial websites and apps?

by difosfor

4/18/2026 at 1:36:03 PM

Right, these are licensed by Apple for UI use on Apple platforms only. The README has a "Before you use this" callout up top about this. sfsym is an export tool; what you do with the output is on you.

by olliewagner

4/18/2026 at 10:37:45 AM

This is great! I found myself asking my AI agents to generate those icons every so often (esp. for websites), so thank you for taking the time to build this.

Quick question, are you also planning on supporting animations?

by tasoeur

4/18/2026 at 1:52:43 PM

Thanks! I'm not sure how animations would translate into these exported formats. SF Symbols animations are typically state driven, and that doesn't really translate to a standalone SVG/PNG/PDF. You'd get something that autoplays on loop, or fires once. Let me know if you had something else in mind.

by olliewagner

4/19/2026 at 7:33:28 AM

any chance for other icon sets? lucide/tabler/material. keeping icons consistent between a web app and ios app is pain when the toolchains dont overlap

by daylab

4/18/2026 at 1:47:51 PM

[dead]

by Serhii-Set