How to install icons with GTK4

[Paul_Emsley]

I am trying to understand how to add my png icons to my buttons in GTK4.

From

Gtk.Button.set_icon_name

I see that I should be using an IconTheme. OK, so what’s that?

Gtk.IconTheme

OK, so it seems that I need to add the directory where my icons are.

Let’s presume I want them to be in the standard/“canonical” place, I don’t know what that actually means, so I’m guessing at

$HOME/install-myapp/share/my-app/icons
(where the installation prefix is $HOME/install-myapp)

From the above page, it seems that I need to add a resource path:

Gtk.IconTheme.add_resource_path

but what actually goes in there? - I don’t see.

I presume that I can set the icon-name property in the ui file:

<property name="icon-name">flip-horizontal.png</property>

I don’t see how this is connected to the directory I set for the resource path.

Maybe this is documented somewhere? I couldn’t find it.

Thanks.

[ebassi (Emmanuele Bassi)]

The GNOME developers documentation has a tutorial on themed icons.

The recommended way to ship assets with your app is to use GResources, instead of installing files, except for the application icon, as that one has to be accessible by your desktop.

[Paul_Emsley]

Thank you @ebassi - that was the documentation I needed to read many days ago.