Working with SVGs should be simple.
But somehow, it’s still a mess in 2026.
If you’ve ever exported icons from Figma (or any design tool), you probably know what I mean.
Here’s what I usually get:
- random inline styles
- hardcoded fill colors
- inconsistent or missing viewBox
- unnecessary groups and attributes
- SVGs that don’t scale properly
- completely different structure for every icon
And every time, before I can even use them in a React project, I have to clean them manually.
Again. And again. And again.
The “manual cleanup” problem
A typical workflow looks like this:
- Open SVG file
- Remove inline styles
- Replace fills with
currentColor - Fix the
viewBox - Remove unnecessary nodes
- Convert attributes to camelCase (for React)
- Wrap everything into a component
It doesn’t take hours… but it’s repetitive, boring, and easy to mess up.
Especially when you have dozens (or hundreds) of icons.
In one of my recent projects, I had to clean ~80 SVGs manually. That’s when it really started to annoy me.
And I kept thinking: why am I still doing this in 2026?
Why existing tools don’t fully solve it
Yes, tools like SVGO help.
But:
- they don’t prepare SVGs for frameworks like React or React Native
- they don’t handle multicolor icons well
- they don’t give you ready-to-use components
- they still require manual adjustments
So you end up with a “half-clean” SVG that still needs work.
What I actually wanted
At some point I realized I don’t want to think about SVG cleanup at all. I just want this:
- drop SVGs in
- get clean, consistent output
- use it directly in my project
No manual fixes. No repetitive steps.
So I built a small tool for myself
I ended up building a tool that:
- cleans SVGs automatically
- converts them into React / React Native components
- supports multicolor icons
- keeps gradients
- removes unnecessary attributes
- normalizes structure
Basically — it turns messy SVGs into something you can actually use in production.
I’ve been using it in my own workflow, and it saves a lot of time.
Curious how others handle this
I’m genuinely interested:
How do you deal with SVGs in your projects?
- Do you clean them manually?
- Use scripts?
- Or just live with the mess?
If you're curious, the tool is called SVGForce — I built it mainly for my own workflow, but maybe it’s useful for you too.
Would love to hear how others handle this.
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