Use Font Awesome Icons in CSS - css

Question

I have some CSS that looks like this:
#content h2 {
background: url(../images/tContent.jpg) no-repeat 0 6px;
}
I would like to replace the image with an icon from Font Awesome.
I do not see anyway to use the icon in CSS as a background image. Is this possible to do assuming the Font Awesome stylesheets/fonts are loaded before my CSS?

Answer 1

You can't use text as a background image, but you can use the :before or :after pseudo classes to place a text character where you want it, without having to add all kinds of messy extra mark-up.
Be sure to set position:relative on your actual text wrapper for the positioning to work.
.mytextwithicon {
position:relative;
}
.mytextwithicon:before {
content: "\25AE"; /* this is your text. You can also use UTF-8 character codes as I do here */
font-family: FontAwesome;
left:-5px;
position:absolute;
top:0;
}
EDIT:
Font Awesome v5 uses other font names than older versions:
For FontAwesome v5, Free Version, use: font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free"
For FontAwesome v5, Pro Version, use: font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Pro"
Note that you should set the same font-weight property, too (seems to be 900).
Another way to find the font name is to right click on a sample font awesome icon on your page and get the font name (same way the utf-8 icon code can be found, but note that you can find it out on :before).

Answer 2

Actually even font-awesome CSS has a similar strategy for setting their icon styles. If you want to get a quick hold of the icon code, check the non-minified font-awesome.css file and there they are....each font in its purity.

Answer 3

Consolidating everything above, the following is the final class which works well
.faArrowIcon {
position:relative;
}
.faArrowIcon:before {
font-family: FontAwesome;
top:0;
left:-5px;
padding-right:10px;
content: "\f0a9";
}

Answer 4

To use font awesome using css follow below steps -
step 1 - Add Fonts of FontAwesome in CSS
/*Font Awesome Fonts*/
#font-face {
font-family: 'FontAwesome';
//in url add your folder path of FontAwsome Fonts
src: url('font-awesome/fontawesome-webfont.ttf') format('truetype');
}
Step - 2 Use below css to apply font on class element of HTML
.sorting_asc:after {
content: "\f0de"; /* this is your text. You can also use UTF-8 character codes as I do here */
font-family: FontAwesome;
padding-left: 10px !important;
vertical-align: middle;
}
And finally, use "sorting_asc" class to apply the css on desired HTML tag/element.

Answer 5

You can try this example class. and find icon content here: http://astronautweb.co/snippet/font-awesome/
#content h2:before {
display: inline-block;
font: normal normal normal 14px/1 FontAwesome;
font-size: inherit;
text-rendering: auto;
-webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased;
-moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale;
transform: translate(0, 0);
content: "\f007";
}

Answer 6

I am bit late to the party. Just like to suggest another way.
button.calendar::before {
content: '\f073';
font-family: 'Font Awesome 5 Free';
left: -4px;
bottom: 4px;
position: relative;
}
position, left and bottom are used to align the icon.
Sometimes adding font-weight: 600 or above also helps.

Answer 7

No need to embed content into the CSS. You can put the badge content inside the fa element, then adjust the badge css. http://jsfiddle.net/vmjwayrk/2/
<i class="fa fa-envelope fa-5x" style="position:relative;color:grey;">
<span style="
background-color: navy;
border-radius: 50%;
font-size: .25em;
display:block;
position:absolute;
text-align: center;
line-height: 2em;
top: -.5em;
right: -.5em;
width: 2em;
height: 2em;
border:solid 4px #fff;
box-shadow:0px 0px 1px #000;
color: #fff;
">17</span>
</i>

Answer 8

#content h2:before {
content: "\f055";
font-family: FontAwesome;
left:0;
position:absolute;
top:0;
}
Example Link:
https://codepen.io/bungeedesign/pen/XqeLQg
Get Icon code from:
https://fontawesome.com/cheatsheet?from=io

Answer 9

Alternatively, if using Sass, one can "extend" FA icons to display them:
.mytextwithicon:before {
#extend .fas, .fa-angle-double-right;
#extend .mr-2; // using bootstrap to add a small gap
// between the icon and the text.
}

Answer 10

It seems that the given answers don't give a real background as the fontawesome is rendered outside the bloc you want the background in.
Here is my solution to have a "real" background effect :
html :
<div id="bloc" class="bg_ico_outer" style="">
<i class="fa fa-bookmark-o bg_ico"></i>
<div class='bloc_inner'>
<h2>test fontawesome as background</h2>
</div>
</div>
css :
.bg_ico {
position: absolute;
top: 0px;
right: -10px;
font-size: 17em;
color: green;
transform: rotate(25deg);
}
.bg_ico_outer{position: relative; overflow: hidden;}
#bloc{
height: 200px;
width:200px;
background: blue;
margin:50px auto;
}
.bloc_inner{
position: absolute;
}
h2{color: white;}

Answer 11

For this you just need to add content attribute and font-family attribute to the required element via :before or :after wherever applicable.
For example: I wanted to attach an attachment icon after all the a element inside my post. So, first I need to search if such icon exists in fontawesome. Like in the case I found it here, i.e. fa fa-paperclip. Then I would right click the icon there, and go the ::before pseudo property to fetch out the content tag it is using, which in my case I found to be \f0c6. Then I would use that in my css like this:
.post a:after {
font-family: FontAwesome,
content: " \f0c6" /* I added a space before \ for better UI */
}

Answer 12

This seems to be the simplest solution :-)
#content h2:before {
font-family: FontAwesome;
content: "\f055";
position:absolute;
left:0;
top:0;
}