Header links#

The header navigation bar is at the top of each page and contains top-level navigation across pages in your documentation, as well as extra links and components that you can add. These sections cover a few things you can control with the Header Navigation Bar.

Icon links#

Icon links are a collection of images and icons that each link to a page or external site. They are helpful if you wish to display social media icons, GitHub badges, or project logos.

These links take the following form:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "icon_links": [
        {
            # Label for this link
            "name": "GitHub",
            # URL where the link will redirect
            "url": "https://github.com/<your-org>/<your-repo>",  # required
            # Icon class (if "type": "fontawesome"), or path to local image (if "type": "local")
            "icon": "fa-brands fa-square-github",
            # The type of image to be used (see below for details)
            "type": "fontawesome",
        }
   ]
}

Additionally, the screen-reader accessible label for this menu can be configured:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "icon_links_label": "Quick Links",
    ...
}

There are two kinds of icons you can use, described below:

FontAwesome icons#

FontAwesome is a collection of icons that are commonly used in websites. They include both generic shape icons (e.g., “arrow-down”), and brand-specific icons (e.g. “GitHub”).

You can use FontAwesome icons by specifying "type": "fontawesome", and specifying a FontAwesome class in the icon value. The value of icon can be any full FontAwesome 6 Free icon. In addition to the main icon class, e.g. fa-cat, the “style” class must also be provided e.g. fa-brands for branding, or fa-solid for solid.

Here are several examples:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "icon_links": [
        {
            "name": "GitHub",
            "url": "https://github.com/<your-org>/<your-repo>",
            "icon": "fa-brands fa-square-github",
            "type": "fontawesome",
        },
        {
            "name": "GitLab",
            "url": "https://gitlab.com/<your-org>/<your-repo>",
            "icon": "fa-brands fa-square-gitlab",
            "type": "fontawesome",
        },
        {
            "name": "Twitter",
            "url": "https://twitter.com/<your-handle>",
            "icon": "fa-brands fa-square-twitter",
            # The default for `type` is `fontawesome`, so it is not required in the above examples
        },
        {
            "name": "Mastodon",
            "url": "https://<your-host>@<your-handle>",
            "icon": "fa-brands fa-mastodon",
        },
    ],
    ...
}

Hint

To get custom colors like “Twitter blue”, use the following in your CSS, e.g. custom.css:

svg.fa-square-twitter {
   color: #55acee;
}

Image icons#

If you’d like to display an icon image that is not in the FontAwesome icons library, you may instead specify a URL or a path to a local image that will be used for the icon. You may also use .svg images as if they were FontAwesome with a little additional setup.

Bitmap image icons#

For all bitmap image icons such as .png, .jpg, etc., you must specify type as local.

Note

All icon images with "type": "local" are inserted into the document using <img> tags. If you need features specific to objects in the svg class please see svg image icons

To display an image on the web, use "type": "url", and provide a URL to an image in the icon value. For example:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "icon_links": [
        {
            "name": "Pandas",
            "url": "https://pandas.pydata.org",
            "icon": "https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pydata/pydata-sphinx-theme/main/docs/_static/pandas-square.svg",
            "type": "url",
        },
    ],
    ...
}

To display a local image from a file path, use "type": "local", and add a path to an image relative to your documentation root in the icon value. For example:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "icon_links": [
        {
            "name": "PyData",
            "url": "https://pydata.org",
            "icon": "_static/pydata-logo-square.png",
            "type": "local",
        },
    ],
    ...
}

Tip

Use .svg images for a higher-resolution output that behaves similarly across screen sizes.

SVG image icons#

In order to make use of the full feature set of .svg images provided by HTML you will need to set up the .svg to be used as a FontAwesome type icon. This is a fairly straightforward process:

Copy custom-icons.js into an appropriate directory of your documentation source (typically source/js). In that file you will find a list of custom icon definitions. Each definition looks like this:

{
  prefix: "fa-custom",
  iconName: "pypi",
  icon: [
    17.313, // viewBox width
    19.807, // viewBox height
    [], // ligature
    "e001", // unicode codepoint - private use area
    "m10.383 0.2-3.239 ...", // svg path
  ],
}

Remove the existing list of icon definitions and add your own using the same pattern as above:
1. Keep the value of prefix as “fa-custom”
2. Set the value of iconName to a short, sensible, lowercase name for your icon
3. Change the view box height and width to match that of your icon
4. For each custom icon you define in the list, increment the Unicode codepoint by 1: "e001", "e002", "e003"…
5. Replace the SVG path string with the path that defines your custom icon
In conf.py, add the relative path from your source directory to the custom javascript file:
```
html_js_files = [
   ...
   ("js/custom-icons.js", {"defer": "defer"}),
   ...
]
```
Changed in version v0.17.0: defer attribute is required.

Important

Do not add more than one custom-icons.js file in your conf.py.

Each custom icon js file includes a call to FontAwesome.library.add(). Your site’s JavaScript can only call that function once. In our testing, subsequent calls to that function do not load additional icons.

Set up the icon link in the html_theme_options as a FontAwesome icon:

html_theme_options = [
   ...
   "icon_links": [
      {
         "name": "PyPI",
         "url": "https://www.pypi.org",
         "icon": "fa-custom fa-pypi",
         "type": "fontawesome",
      },
   ],
   ...
]

That’s it, your icon will now be inserted with the <svg> tag and not <img>! You can reference your custom FontAwesome icon in CSS using the pattern .fa-<iconName> , for example .fa-pypi.

Icon Link Shortcuts#

There are a few shortcuts supported to minimize configuration for commonly-used services. These may be removed in a future release in favor of icon_links:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "github_url": "https://github.com/<your-org>/<your-repo>",
    "gitlab_url": "https://gitlab.com/<your-org>/<your-repo>",
    "bitbucket_url": "https://bitbucket.org/<your-org>/<your-repo>",
    "twitter_url": "https://twitter.com/<your-handle>",
    ...
}

Add custom attributes to icon links#

You can add custom attributes to the link element (<a>) of your icon links. This is helpful if you need to add custom link behavior. To do so, use the pattern "attributes": {"attribute1": "value1"} in a given icon link entry.

For example, to specify a custom target and rel attribute, and to define your custom link classes:

html_theme_options = {
    ...
    "icon_links": [
        {
            "name": "PyData",
            "url": "https://pydata.org",
            "icon": "_static/pydata-logo-square.png",
            "type": "local",
            # Add additional attributes to the href link.
            # The defaults of the target, rel, class, title, and href may be overwritten.
            "attributes": {
               "target" : "_blank",
               "rel" : "noopener me",
               "class": "nav-link custom-fancy-css"
            }
        },
    ],
    ...
}

Warning

This might make your icon links behave unexpectedly and might override the default behavior, so make sure you know what you’re doing!