Batch Process SVG Icons with Icon Explorer

Recoloring forty icons to a new palette used to mean forty rounds of open, recolor, save. IconVectors 2.0+ turns that into one batch: select the files in the Icon Explorer, pick a command from Batch Processing, and the app runs the same transformation the Editor uses on every file you selected. Version 2.0 shipped with three commands. IconVectors 2.1+ has 14, from Apply Palette to Add Badge Overlays, and every one of them goes through the same preview before anything is written.

Two things before you start. A batch writes to disk, and there is no undo for file operations and no Recycle Bin in this release, so the safe habit is to batch a copy of the files (that is step 3). And this guide is for IconVectors 2.0+ on Windows, macOS, and Linux.

1. Open the folder in the Icon Explorer

Press F5 or choose View -> Explorer, then open the folder: File -> Open Folder... (Ctrl+Shift+O), a path typed into the address field and confirmed with Enter, or the ... browse button. Explorer lists the folder's direct child folders first, with their icon counts, then its SVG files. It never looks inside the subfolders, so a batch always works on one folder at a time.

The document you had open in the Editor stays open. F4 or Ctrl+Tab takes you back to it, with the layout exactly as you left it.

2. Select the icons

Click a tile to select it. Ctrl+click toggles one tile, Shift+click selects a range, Ctrl+Shift+click adds a range, and Ctrl+A selects every icon currently shown. The header keeps a count of selected icons; glance at it before you move on.

The Filter box is the fastest way through a big folder. It matches a literal piece of the filename, so typing arrow keeps arrow-button-left.svg and arrow-button-right.svg and hides the rest; there are no wildcards. Files you selected before filtering stay selected while hidden, and they stay in the batch. The batch dialog reports the total and how many of those are hidden, which is your cue to clear the filter and look again if the number surprises you.

3. Copy the selection into a working folder first

Right-click the selection and choose Group in Folder.... Explorer creates a direct child folder and copies the selected files into it; the Move icons into this folder checkbox moves them instead, and copy is the default for a reason. When the copy commits, Explorer opens the new folder, so the batch you run next touches the copies and leaves the originals alone.

This is the whole safety net, so do not skip it on a folder you care about. Apply does stage and validate its output before it replaces any original, and it rolls the set back when a file fails partway through. But a batch that succeeds and does the wrong thing has no undo. Copies are cheap; keep them until you have looked at the result.

4. Pick the operation

Open Explorer -> Batch Processing, right-click the selection, or use the toolbar menu. The 14 commands in IconVectors 2.1+ fall into four groups. The first group writes new files and leaves the sources alone; the other three modify the selected files, or, where noted, can write copies instead.

• New files from the selection. Add Badge Overlays combines each base icon with each badge (Add Badge Overlays to a Whole SVG Icon Set). Make Icon Versions writes Hot, Disabled and Dark Theme variants (Make Hot, Disabled and Dark Theme Icon Versions). Make PNG, ICO Bitmap Icons renders PNGs at chosen sizes and one multi-size ICO per icon (Export PNG and ICO from a Folder of SVG Icons).
• Colors. Apply Palette maps every color to the nearest color of an installed palette. Replace Colors swaps one exact RGB value for another. Convert to currentColor makes the paints symbolic for CSS theming (both in Make an Icon Set Theme-Aware with currentColor and Replace Colors). Adjust Icon Colors applies one brightness, contrast, hue, saturation, levels, desaturate or invert setting to all. Apply Auto Gradient turns each flat paint into a light-to-dark gradient of its own color.
• Geometry and strokes. Resize Icons and Center and Fit change the canvas and placement. Rotate / Flip turns or mirrors every icon. Change Line Stroke sets width, cap, join and color on existing strokes. Outline Strokes converts strokes to filled paths.
• Optimization. Optimize SVG Files compacts markup, colors and path numbers, and only rewrites a file when the result is smaller (Shrink an Icon Library with Optimize SVG Files).

Each dialog carries the settings of the matching Editor command; there is no separate batch-only logic, which is the point. Set them as you would for a single icon. Since 2.1+ every valid setting is remembered the moment you enter it, across runs and across IconVectors windows, so the second run of the same batch is select, open, preview, apply. If the document open in the Editor is one of the selected files, the whole batch is refused: close that document or take it out of the selection, then try again.

5. Read the plan before you confirm

Clicking Preview Changes writes nothing yet. Explorer first parses and validates every selected file, in a fixed order, and shows a plan with four counts: files that will change, files that stay unchanged, files the operation does not support, and files that failed to load. Unchanged usually means the icon already matched, every color already in the palette, say. Unsupported and failed are worth a look before you continue, and in 2.1+ each one comes with a diagnostic that names the file and the reason.

The preview in 2.1+ also shows a representative before and after image, and for the commands that write new files, the complete list of destinations and how many existing files would be replaced. If a count or a picture is not what you expected, press Back: it returns to the options with your settings and your selection intact, you change one thing, and preview again. Cancel writes nothing either.

6. Apply and verify

Confirm the plan and a progress dialog takes over: current file, count, progress, and a Cancel button. Output goes to staging files first and is validated in full before any original is replaced. If a step fails, Explorer rolls the set back where it can and otherwise tells you exactly what state the folder is in. Cancelling behaves the same way. When the run ends you get one summary, and Explorer refreshes the grid once so the thumbnails show the new files.

Then look at the result. Double-click a changed tile to open it in the Editor, check the colors, the size or the strokes, and press F5 to come back. Files that changed after you selected them, or that were removed in the meantime, are rejected as stale rather than processed, so a folder someone else is editing at the same time is not a problem either.

What a batch will not do

A batch works on one folder, not on its subfolders. It has no undo and no Recycle Bin. It refuses to touch the document that is open in the Editor, and it refuses a plan whose inputs changed after the preview rather than applying stale results. Batch Rename stays a plain dialog without a preview step, because a rename is cheap to check in the grid. Copies plus a careful read of the plan cover the rest, but read the plan every time.

The same 14 commands are on the MCP surface with the same plan and apply steps, so a coding agent can run them too: see Drive Icon Explorer and Batches from MCP. If you want to try this on your own icons, download the IconVectors 2.10 trial for Windows and start with a copy of a small folder.