The HeroIcons package approach works for client side frameworks but it doesn’t work for server side frameworks. With the package, we would send to the client the same svg several times, either in the same or separate pages. The way to address it by sending it as a regular image and have the browser cache it, as pretty much any server side framework does.

I am 100% certain that the new default provides better user experiences. Upgrading the icons is the only downside, but that rarely happens, and it is as easy as dropping a zip file. In any case, we are looking into streamlining it, potentially with a mix task.

I think the icons should be a depedency e.g. like how esbuild or tailwind are pulled in assets.

Icon packages like HeroIcons are a great upgrade to user experience, since it’s easier than inlining SVGs and one can go and use different ones available in HEX like Lucide Icons, etc. I even commited some PRs to HeroIcons to make upgrading easier, etc.

With this said, I understand the change for performance reasons, but like Kobrakai says, it would be nicer for it to be an external package with an easy way to update the icons, be it with new releases or in place with a mix script (what we have now but with the added script).
If Phoenix Components provides the Icon Component Function one could easily use different icon packages and still reap the performance benefits of this method.