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Where do the Animated Icons toggles live — a standalone extension Settings page, or Theme Settings → Icons?

· 3 min read
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Jon-Michael Lastimosa
Senior Web Developer

The question: the Animated Icons extension has per-technology toggles (Lottie, Rive, Animated SVG, Animated raster). Should they live on the extension's own Settings page, or move into Theme Settings → Icons — perhaps as a new tab?

Context​

Animated icons are an opt-in extension: activating it reveals an "Animated" tab in the icon picker and lets you choose which animation technologies are enabled. Those choices started on the extension's own settings page (settings-options.php → Extensions → Animated Icons → Settings).

Meanwhile, all other icon configuration already lives in Theme Settings → Icons — an Icon Settings box whose sub-tabs are Library / Browse / Upload (which webfont packs and SVG libraries are enabled, catalog installs, custom uploads). So a user configuring icons had to look in two places: packs in Theme Settings → Icons, animation technologies buried under Extensions.

Two codebase precedents pointed the way. The Animation Engine extension does not ship a settings page at all — it contributes a section to Theme Settings via the fw_settings_options filter while active. And the Icons page is already a tabbed box, so a fourth tab slots in cleanly.

Options considered​

  • Keep the extension's own Settings page. Self-contained and extension-scoped (persists across theme switches). But it splits icon configuration across two screens and hides the toggles where few people look — the opposite of discoverable.
  • Fold the toggles into Theme Settings → Icons as an "Animated" sub-tab — chosen. Co-locates every icon setting on one screen, puts the toggles exactly where someone configuring icons is already looking, and matches the Animation-Engine-style "extension contributes to Theme Settings" convention. The tab appears only while the extension is active.
  • A separate top-level Theme Settings tab (e.g. "Animated Icons"). More discoverable than the extension page, but it divorces the toggles from the packs they belong with; a sub-tab of Icons is tighter.

Decision​

Move the toggles into Theme Settings → Icons as a fourth "Animated" sub-tab (beside Library / Browse / Upload) and drop the extension's standalone settings-options.php. The Icons page exposes a filter (unysonplus_icons_animated_settings) that it fills into the box; the extension hooks that filter only while active, so with the extension off the Icons page shows just Library / Browse / Upload. The four gate filters (fw_icon_lottie_enabled / _rive / _svg_animation / _raster) now read their values from theme settings (fw_get_db_settings_option) instead of extension settings. No data migration was needed — the feature is unreleased.

Why​

It removes the "two places to configure icons" split: packs and animation technologies now sit on one screen, in the order you'd reason about them. It follows the framework's own pattern (an animation extension augmenting Theme Settings rather than shipping a bespoke page), so it reads as native rather than bolted-on. And the injection-via-filter keeps the coupling clean — the Icons page owns the tab slot, the extension owns the contents, and nothing appears when the extension is inactive.

The one deliberate trade-off: settings are now theme-scoped (a theme switch resets them) rather than extension-scoped. That is a feature, not a regression here — the pack toggles the animated toggles now sit beside are also theme-scoped, so the whole Icons screen behaves as one consistent unit.

Status​

Accepted.