Lightweight Social Icons
Lightweight Social Icons is an easy to use, lightweight social icon widget which lets you display your favorite social profile icons.
Use with caution
Lightweight Social Icons works, but test it on a staging site before relying on it in 2026. It runs on 30K+ sites, is rated 4.7/5 and was last updated 7 years ago, and scores 47/100 on our health check.
- Proven at scale on 30K+ active sites
- Loved by users — 4.7/5 from 63 reviews
- No update in 6 years
- Only tested up to WordPress 5.4 (latest is 7.1)
How does it stack up?
Side-by-side on installs, updates, ratings & support
Daily downloads
Download spikes usually follow a new release — each site that auto-updates counts as a download.
Rankings
Where Lightweight Social Icons stands todayWordPress.org search rankings
Live position in the plugin search, top 100| Keyword | Position |
|---|---|
| social icon widget | >100 |
| social icons | >100 |
| social media | >100 |
| social networking | #44 |
| social profiles | >100 |
Version adoption
Share of active sites per release.
Rating breakdown
★★★★★★★★★★ 4.7 from 63 reviews
About Lightweight Social Icons
From the official readme · v1.1Description
Lightweight Social Icons is an easy to use, lightweight social icon widget which lets you display your favorite social profile icons.
The icons use an icon font, meaning you can choose the size, border radius (roundess), color and hover color of your icons!
Check out GeneratePress, our awesome WordPress theme! (https://wordpress.org/themes/generatepress)
Features include:
- Choose your own order
- Icon size
- Border radius
- Background color
- Text/icon color
- Background color on hover
- Text/icon color on hover
- Open links in new window
- Enable/disable tooltips
- Alignment of icons
Included icons:
- Google+
- Flickr
- RSS
- Stumbleupon
- Tumblr
- Vimeo
- YouTube
- Github
- Soundcloud
- DeviantArt
- Phone
- Skype
- Dribbble
- Foursquare
- Spotify
- Digg
- Vine
- Codepen
- Delicious
- JSFiddle
- Stack Overflow
- WordPress
- Dropbox
- Steam
- Behance
- iTunes
- Yelp
- 500px
- AngelList
- Blog Lovin’
- Paper Plane (Newsletter)
- VK
- Bandcamp
- BitBucket
- Snapchat
- Trip Advisor
- Houzz
- Mixcloud
- Last.fm
Installation
There’s two ways to install Lightweight Social Icons.
- Go to “Plugins > Add New” in your Dashboard and search for: Lightweight Social Icons
- Download the .zip from WordPress.org, and upload the folder to the
/wp-content/plugins/directory via FTP.
In most cases, #1 will work fine and is way easier.
Frequently asked questions
How do I add a widget with my icons?
Make sure Lightweight Social Icons is activated. Navigate to “Appearance > Widgets” and look for the “Lightweight Social Icons” widget. Drag the widget into your desired widget area. Once the widget is added to a widget area, you can expand it and fill in your profiles.
What options does Lightweight Social Icons have?
Choose your own order Title (optional): Choose a title for your widget. Icon size: Choose the size of the icon font. Border radius: Choose the border radius of the icon. Border radius refers to the “roundness” of the button. Background color: The background color of the button. Text Color: The icon color. Background hover color: The background color of the button when you hover over it. Text hover color: The color of the icon when you hover over the button. Open link in a new window?: Choose to open all of the links in a new window/tab. Alignment: Choose to align the button to the left…
How do I add my social profile URLs?
In the select box on the left, choose your desired social media site. To the right of the select box, enter in the URL of your profile on that specific social media site. The “Skype” option takes your Skype username. The “Phone” option takes your phone number.
Can I assign different colors to each icon?
Not at this time (without custom CSS of course). We’re hoping to add this feature soon.
Can I display my icons with a shortcode?
Not by default, but you can use a plugin like this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/widget-shortcode/ It allows you to add the widget to an arbitrary widget area, and then you can call that widget using a shortcode elsewhere in your website.
Changelog
Fix styling issue with themes that don't add widget ID
1.1
- Add rel=”noopener noreferrer” to links opening in new windows
1.0.1
- Fix styling issue with themes that don’t add widget ID
1.0
- Code cleanup
- Fix widget controls in the Customizer
- Fix compatibility error with Site Origin Page Builder
- Fix color picker labels
- Use flexbox for admin controls
0.9
- Fix a couple stray PHP notices
- New icon: Snapchat
- New icon: Trip Advisor
- New icon: Houzz
- New icon: Mixcloud
- New icon: Last.fm
- Updated icon: Google+
- Updated icon: Instagram
- Remove query strings from font
- Update text domain to use WP.org translations
- Minify style.css
0.8
- Fix incompatibility with Custom Sidebars plugin
- Hide empty fields by default – click “Add Icon” button to show more fields
- Alphabetize list of icons
- Disable open in new window with email/contact button
- New icon: Xing
- New icon: Bandcamp
- New icon: BitBucket
0.7
- Fix warning
Screenshots
For developers
Is this your plugin? Show off the numbers.
Add a live badge to your site, docs or GitHub README. It updates on its own — no account needed.
Best Lightweight Social Icons alternatives
All social icon widget plugins →FAQ
Lightweight Social Icons: quick answers
Straight answers, pulled from live WordPress.org data.
Live data from WordPress.org · checked Sep 27, 2026
Is Lightweight Social Icons free?
Yes. Lightweight Social Icons is free to download and use from the official WordPress.org plugin directory.
Is Lightweight Social Icons safe to use in 2026?
Lightweight Social Icons works, but test it on a staging site before relying on it in 2026. It runs on 30K+ sites, is rated 4.7/5 and was last updated 7 years ago, and scores 47/100 on our health check.
How many websites use Lightweight Social Icons?
Lightweight Social Icons is active on 30K+ WordPress websites and has been downloaded 467,340 times since it launched in August 2014. It was downloaded 483 times in the last 30 days.
Does Lightweight Social Icons work with WordPress 7.1?
Lightweight Social Icons is officially tested up to WordPress 5.4.23, while the latest release is 7.1.2. It may still work, but try it on a staging site first.
When was Lightweight Social Icons last updated?
The latest version, 1.1, was released on March 18, 2020 (7 years ago).
Who makes Lightweight Social Icons?
Lightweight Social Icons is developed and maintained by Tom.
What are the best alternatives to Lightweight Social Icons?
The most popular alternatives to Lightweight Social Icons are Social Icon Widget (500+ installs), Simple Social Icon Widget (200+ installs) and SX Social Icons (10+ installs).
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