Font awesome is an iconic font. Read more about it on http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome/

This category brings this great iconic font on iOS.

First, make sure you have FontAwesome.ttf bundled in your project and that UIAppFonts key in the project's plist file contains a String item named FontAwesome.ttf Then add the NSString+FontAwesome category to the project.

UILabel *label = [...]
label.font = [UIFont fontWithName:kFontAwesomeFamilyName size:20];

You can now use enums for all the different iconic characters

label.text = [NSString fontAwesomeIconStringForEnum:FAGithub];

or you can reference them by using the class identifiers listed here http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icons

label.text = [NSString fontAwesomeIconStringForIconIdentifier:@"fa-github"];

or you can add the UIImage+FontAwesome category to generate icon image directly

UIImage *github = [UIImage imageWithIcon:@"fa-github" backgroundColor:[UIColor purpleColor] iconColor:[UIColor colorWithRed:0.9 green:0.9 blue:0.9 alpha:255] iconScale:2.f fontSize:20];

then you will get an icon like this

That's all.
Have a look at the small demo project for further information.

FAImageView is now extended and contains a new property called defaultView that is shown when the image is set to nil. It is possible to use one the font-awesome icon as a default placeholder for an image view.

FAImageView *imageView = [[FAImageView alloc] initWithFrame:CGRectMake(0.f, 0.f, 100.f, 100.f)];
imageView.image = nil;
[imageView setDefaultIconIdentifier:@"fa-github"];

Keep in mind that if you have installed the FontAwesome font in your iOS system (with InstaFont for example), the embedded font in your App will not be used! So if your system FontAwesome font is v4.2, you will never be able to display icons from v4.3 and v4.4 for example from the embedded font.

Two solutions :

1. Remove the font profile from your iOS device
2. Rename the Postscript name of file FontAwesome.ttf with a tool like ttx for example and use the new name in NSString+FontAwesome.h

Here is the step by step for second solution :

• Install fonttools

  git clone https://github.com/behdad/fonttools.git ;
  cd fonttools/
  sudo python setup.py install
  

• Convert the FontAwesome.ttf file to ttx format

  cd your_app/Pods/FontAwesome+iOS/Resources/
  ttx FontAwesome.ttf
  

• Replace all occurence of FontAwesome with FontAwesome440 for example in ttx file and save

• Convert back ttx font to ttf

  ttx FontAwesome.ttx
  mv FontAwesome.ttf FontAwesome.ttf.orig
  mv FontAwesome#1.ttf FontAwesome.ttf
  

• In file NSString+FontAwesome.h, change font Postscript name :

  static NSString *const kFontAwesomeFamilyName = @"FontAwesome440";
  

• Build, run and dance

This project uses the FontAwesome fix made by Pit Garbe that you can find at https://github.com/leberwurstsaft/FontAwesome-for-iOS Version 2.0 of the Font Awesome font, CSS, and LESS files are licensed under CC BY 3.0: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ A mention of 'Font Awesome - http://fortawesome.github.com/Font-Awesome' in human-readable source code is considered acceptable attribution (most common on the web). If human readable source code is not available to the end user, a mention in an 'About' or 'Credits' screen is considered acceptable (most common in desktop or mobile software)