selection_badge_icons

Odoo 19 redesigned the Schedule Activity dialog, and the activity type selector became a row of badges, each carrying the type's icon: an envelope for Email, a phone for Call, a calendar for Meeting. The widget behind it is selection_badge_icons, registered by the mail module as a subclass of the core selection_badge widget.

Where the parent renders text-only badges for selection or many2one fields, this one is many2one-only and prepends an icon to every badge. The icon comes from a field on the related model, named through the iconField attribute; in core that is the icon char column on mail.activity.type, holding FontAwesome class names such as fa-phone. Records with an empty icon get the defaultIcon fallback, fa-check unless you set one.

The widget loads its choices itself with a search_read on the related model, honoring the field's domain, and renders one badge per record. Clicking writes the many2one like any selection badge; the active choice is highlighted.

Icon badges beat a dropdown when the choice is small, frequent and recognizable. Scheduling an activity is exactly that: the same four to eight types, chosen dozens of times a day, faster to hit as a labeled button than to open, scan and click in a dropdown. Icons carry recognition; regulars stop reading the labels.

The same pattern fits custom pickers: a delivery method with a truck and a store icon, a ticket channel with mail and phone icons, a machine type on a maintenance request. The requirements are only that the related model carries an icon column with FontAwesome class names and that the option list stays short, because every option renders as a button and a twenty-record model turns the form into a wall of badges.

One planning note: this widget is an Odoo 19 feature and the development branch already replaces it with a core badges family, so treat it as a one-version bridge if you are building on it heavily. The section on Odoo 20 below has the details.

The core pattern, from the activity dialog

<field name="activity_type_id" required="1"
       widget="selection_badge_icons" iconField="icon" nolabel="1"/>

Custom picker with a fallback icon and size

<field name="channel_id" widget="selection_badge_icons"
       iconField="icon" defaultIcon="fa-question-circle"
       options="{'size': 'sm'}"/>

The related model side is one char column holding FontAwesome classes:

icon = fields.Char(string="Icon")  # e.g. "fa-phone", "fa-envelope"

Three source-level details decide whether this widget works for a custom model.

It reads the literal name column. The option fetch requests exactly ["id", "name", iconField] from the related model. Models whose display name comes from _rec_name pointing elsewhere, or from a computed display_name, will render empty or wrong labels, because the widget never asks for display_name. The related model needs a real name field with the text you want on the badges.

The fa prefix is hardcoded. The template renders the icon as class="fa {icon}", so icon values must be FontAwesome class names like fa-truck. Odoo's newer oi- icon set or image fields will not render through this widget.

Readonly drops the icons. The readonly branch of the template prints the value as plain text, no badges, no icon. If a form shows the field conditionally readonly, expect the visual to change completely between states.

Also inherited from the parent: the empty-check treats false as empty, the field's domain filters which records become badges, and the whole option list loads eagerly, one more reason to keep the related model short.

Odoo 20 is expected at Odoo Experience in Brussels, 24 to 26 September 2026. What follows is read from the public development branch, which is unstable until release; we re-verify once it ships.

The widget is deleted on master. The whole badge_selection_icons directory is gone from the mail module, one release after it appeared. Its role passes to the new core badges family that replaces selection_badge: a rebuilt badges_selection for selection fields with an icon_mapping option, and a new badges_many2one whose related_icon_field option covers exactly what iconField does today, both with their own default-icon handling.

Practical consequence: an arch using widget="selection_badge_icons" will fall back to the plain many2one widget after the upgrade, silently losing the badge UI. The rewrite to badges_many2one with related_icon_field is small but must be done by hand, the kind of line-item an Odoo migration review catches before users notice. Support for 20 is provisional until release; we will re-verify and update this table.