Use Font Awesome icon as CSS content

Question

I want to use a Font Awesome icon as CSS content, i.e.,

a:before {     content: "<i class='fa...'>...</i>"; } 

I know I cannot use HTML code in content, so is it only images left?

Answer 1

Update for FontAwesome 5 ^{Thanks to Aurelien}

You need to change the font-family to Font Awesome 5 Brands OR Font Awesome 5 Free, based on the type of icon you are trying to render. Also, do not forget to declare font-weight: 900;

a:before {    font-family: "Font Awesome 5 Free";    content: "\f095";    display: inline-block;    padding-right: 3px;    vertical-align: middle;    font-weight: 900; } 

Demo

You can read the rest of the answer below to understand how it works and to know some workarounds for spacing between icon and the text.

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FontAwesome 4 and below

That's the wrong way to use it. Open the font awesome style sheet, go to the class of the font you want to use say fa-phone, copy the content property under that class with the entity, and use it like:

a:before {     font-family: FontAwesome;     content: "\f095"; } 

Demo

Just make sure that if you are looking to target a specific a tag, then consider using a class instead to make it more specific like:

a.class_name:before {     font-family: FontAwesome;     content: "\f095"; } 

Using the way above will stick the icon with the remaining text of yours, so if you want to have a bit of space between the two of them, make it display: inline-block; and use some padding-right:

a:before {     font-family: FontAwesome;     content: "\f095";     display: inline-block;     padding-right: 3px;     vertical-align: middle; } 

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Extending this answer further, since many might be having a requirement to change an icon on hover, so for that, we can write a separate selector and rules for :hover action:

a:hover:before {     content: "\f099"; /* Code of the icon you want to change on hover */ } 

Demo

Now in the above example, icon nudges because of the different size and you surely don't want that, so you can set a fixed width on the base declaration like

a:before {     /* Other properties here, look in the above code snippets */     width: 12px; /* add some desired width here to prevent nudge */ } 

Demo

Answer 2

Another solution without you having to manually mess around with the Unicode characters can be found in Making Font Awesome awesome - Using icons without i-tags (disclaimer: I wrote this article).

In a nutshell, you can create a new class like this:

.icon::before {     display: inline-block;     margin-right: .5em;     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); } 

And then use it with any icon, for example:

<a class="icon fa-car" href="#">This is a link</a>