boolean_icon

Booleans have three sensible renderings in Odoo, and the choice is about meaning rather than taste. A checkbox says this is something you tick. A toggle switch says this is a setting that is on or off. An icon says this is a property of the record, and it happens to be clickable.

This widget is the third. It draws a single icon with the field's label beside it, and clicking flips the value. There is no box, no switch and no visual affordance suggesting a form control, which is exactly what you want when the boolean describes the record rather than configuring it.

The glyph is configurable through one option, and the label is not: it comes from whatever string the field carries in the view, so the widget stays consistent with the rest of the form without extra configuration.

Interface density is where lists and kanban cards are won or lost. A column of checkboxes reads as a form; a column of icons reads as information. On a card, where every pixel is contested, an icon with a short label conveys the same fact in a fraction of the space.

The rule of thumb worth giving a team: if the user's mental model is I am changing a setting, use the toggle. If it is this record is or is not X, use the icon. The widget is cheap enough that getting this right costs one attribute.

Default icon

<field name="is_verified" widget="boolean_icon"/>

A checked-square glyph with the field's label beside it.

Choosing the glyph

<field name="is_urgent" widget="boolean_icon"
       options="{'icon': 'fa-exclamation-triangle'}"/>

Any icon class the interface supports works; the widget passes it straight through.

Controlling the label

<field name="is_urgent" widget="boolean_icon"
       string="Urgent"/>

The label is the field's string, so it is changed with the standard attribute rather than an option.

The component is under forty lines: two props on top of the standard field props, a default for the icon, and an update method that writes the inverted value.

The label prop is the detail worth knowing. Its extractor takes the field's string, which is the same value the form would use for a label elsewhere. That means renaming the field in the view renames the widget's text, with no separate option to keep in step, and it also means the widget always shows a label even where a checkbox would not.

The icon default is a checked-square glyph, which reads naturally for a yes-or-no property. Overriding it is the usual reason to reach for this widget: a flag, a warning triangle, a lock, whatever conveys the property at a glance.

What the widget does not do is as important. There is no read-only branch that changes appearance and no autosave, so it behaves like an ordinary editable field: updating the record and leaving the save to the form. On a list where immediate saving is wanted, the toggle widget is the one with that option.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. The development branch is unstable and this may still change; we re-verify this page after the release.

The icon convention moves. The development branch updates this widget in line with Odoo's newer icon set, so a view passing an older-style icon class should be re-checked. The option itself, the label handling and the click behavior are unchanged.