WordPress 7.2 replaces the icons in the admin menu and in the admin bar. Instead of Dashicons, an icon font that is displayed via CSS, inline SVGs from the @wordpress/icons package appear. Ashar Fuadi describes the change in a Dev Note on make.wordpress.org. According to the announcement of Beta 4, WordPress 7.2 is scheduled for release on December 8, 2026.
What stays the same, what is new?
The menu data does not change. The dashicons values remain in the $menu array and in the REST API, and entries with URLs, Base64 SVGs or the value none work as before. Dashicons without a counterpart in the new core-admin collection also remain usable, as do admin bar entries from third-party providers.
New is an icon API. The function add_menu_page() and the menu_icon argument of register_post_type() also accept the name of a registered icon, for example core-admin/pin. WP_Admin_Bar::add_node() gets an icon argument that appears before the title, and custom collections are created with wp_register_icon_collection() and wp_register_icon(). If the name is not registered, no icon appears; if WP_DEBUG is enabled, WordPress additionally issues a _doing_it_wrong() notice.
Which customizations no longer work?
Color rules that tint icons via ::before no longer take effect. The color must additionally be applied to the icon element, i.e. to div.wp-menu-image in the menu and to .ab-icon in the admin bar; the SVG picks up the color via currentColor. The same applies to the states hover, focus, current, open and the mobile view.
What changes for your admin CSS
According to the Dev Note for WordPress 7.2, which is scheduled for release on December 8, 2026
Until nowIn WordPress 7.2
- Icon color via ::beforeColor additionally on .ab-icon and div.wp-menu-image
- Hide icon via CSSadditionally hide svg or .ab-icon
- Selector .dashicons-*Class menu-icon-* or menu item ID
- Title with empty span ab-iconEntry with icon argument
The Dev Note lists further cases, such as the search icon and collapse button
Sources: Make WordPress Core, WordPress News
To hide an icon, you now also have to target the element itself, i.e. svg or .ab-icon. If an image is to serve as a replacement, you need an empty content value as well as your own size and your own background. The selector .dashicons-* matches all menu items with the same icon; you can target a single entry more precisely via the menu item ID or the class menu-icon-*.
In PHP, many admin bar entries from WordPress core no longer contain the empty span ab-icon in the title. Code that looks for this span will not find it. The exception is the wp-logo entry.
What this means for you
Test a site with a custom admin design first with Beta 4 in a test environment, not on the live website: the WordPress team explicitly warns against installing the beta on websites in production use. The quickest way to test is in the browser via WordPress Playground, alternatively via WP-CLI with wp core update --version=7.2-beta4 or with the Beta Tester plugin.
Search your own CSS for ::before rules for wp-menu-image and ab-icon and also check the hover state and the mobile view. If you maintain plugins, you can use function_exists( 'wp_is_valid_icon_name' ) in menus to detect whether a new WordPress version is running. Older WordPress versions ignore the icon argument in the admin bar.
Our assessment: according to the Dev Note, most plugins will continue to run unchanged. You only have to make manual fixes for sites with their own color scheme in the admin area, and there one additional line per rule for the icon element is usually enough.
Ashar Fuadi published the Dev Note on November 5, 2026.
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