Key Icon Generator

What the key icon means

Credentials, API keys or access. In developer tooling it specifically means a secret string.

Security icons have to signal state as much as function, and the state distinction is often only a few pixels: locked versus unlocked, visible versus hidden, protected versus not. At icon sizes those pairs become indistinguishable, so never rely on the shape alone to communicate a security state — colour, position and text all need to agree. As a brand mark, the padlock and shield are extremely legible silhouettes and among the best-performing shapes in this whole set at 16 pixels.

Where you will actually see it

• API key management screens
• SSH and credential settings
• app icons for secret managers

Drawing the key at 16 pixels

The teeth on the key blade are the first thing to go. A ring plus a plain shaft still reads as a key.

Stroke weight is the control that matters most here. Lucide icons are drawn on a 24 × 24 grid with a 2px stroke, which means that when the icon is scaled down to 16px the stroke is effectively 1.33px — below one device pixel on a standard-density display. Raising the stroke to 2.5 or 3 before exporting keeps the shape solid; lowering it to 1.5 suits large app icons where a heavy stroke looks clumsy. The editor exposes this as a slider, so you can find the value that survives your smallest target size rather than guessing.

Using it in code

If you want the icon in a Vue project rather than as a downloaded asset, it is a named export of the lucide package:

import { Key } from 'lucide-vue-next'

<Key :size="24" :stroke-width="2" />

The download button above gives you something different: the icon composed onto a background with a corner radius, exported as a flat SVG path set. The exporter converts the icon out of its <foreignObject> wrapper first, because a foreign object taints an HTML canvas and would otherwise break PNG and ICO rasterisation.

Related icons

Other icons in the security group.