An icon theme is a named set of icons. It is used to map from an iconname and size to a file. Themes may inherit from other themes as a way to extend them.

An icon file is an image that can be loaded and used as an icon. The supported image file formats are PNG, XPM and SVG. PNG is the recommended bitmap format, and SVG is for vectorized icons. XPM is supported due to backwards compability reasons, and it is not recommended that new themes use XPM files. Support for SVGs is optional.

Icons and themes are searched for in a set of directories, called base directories. The themes are stored in subdirectories of the base directories.

On very high density (high dpi) screens the UI is often scaled to avoid the UI being so small it is hard to see. In order to support this icons can have a target scale, describing what scale factor they are designed for.

For instance, an icon with a directory size of 48 but scale 2x would be 96x96 pixels, but designed to have the same level of detail as a 48x48 icon at scale 1x. This can be used on high density displays where a 48x48 icon would be too small (or ugly upscaled) and a normal 96x96 icon would have a lot of detail that is hard to see.