How do I set a gender?

DiceBear has no single gender switch, but you can shape any avatar to look more masculine or feminine. Every feature is its own option you can set directly, so you pick the traits that fit the look you want, such as the hair or facial hair, and leave out the rest. An upcoming release adds descriptive variant tags that turn the common cases into a one-liner.

Find and apply the options

The Playground shows a preview for every option value and lets you combine them, with the avatar updating as you go. Every avatar style page lists the same options as a static reference, also with previews, so you can look them up at any time. If you would rather not write any code, the Editor lets you browse styles and adjust options visually.

Once you know which options you want, pass them as query parameters in the HTTP API or as options in the JS library and the other libraries. The Avataaars style, for example, lets you turn facial hair off with facialHairProbability=0:

https://api.dicebear.com/10.x/avataaars/svg?seed=Casey&facialHairProbability=0

The options differ from style to style, so check the style page for the one you use.

Filter by tags

The character tags are not available yet

No DiceBear style carries tags such as hairLength or facialHair today, so the filters in this section have no effect for now. Until they ship, set the per-feature options described above.

An upcoming release tags the character styles' variants with descriptive labels such as hairLength:long or headwear:headscarf. The tags option keeps only the variants you choose, which will often be the quickest way to lean on the features that read as more masculine or feminine. For example, keep long hair and leave out facial hair:

const avatar = new Avatar(style, {
  seed: 'Casey',
  tags: ['hairLength:long', '!facialHair'],
});

The same filter works as a query parameter in the HTTP API:

https://api.dicebear.com/10.x/adventurer/svg?seed=Casey&tags=hairLength:long,!facialHair

Tags and the per-feature options work together, so you can combine a tag filter with options such as facialHairProbability. See Filter variants with tags for how the filter behaves and which tags are already available.

Share and reuse option sets

If you put together a set of options you like, share it under Show and tell in our GitHub Discussions. Other people can then build on your work and adapt it to their own needs, and you can reuse combinations that others have already shared.

Why there is no dedicated gender option

Every DiceBear option names something that is drawn: a hairstyle, a beard, glasses, a hat. None of those features belongs to a gender. Whether long hair, a headscarf, or earrings reads as masculine or feminine is a matter of convention, and conventions differ by culture and by personal taste.

A male/female switch would have to settle on one such convention for everyone. DiceBear is used all over the world, in every kind of project, so a fixed mapping would be wrong for a good part of that audience, and the library would be the one deciding what a man or a woman looks like. That call belongs to your project, not to us.

Facial hair is the feature that comes closest to a signal, and it still says little. People grow a beard or shave it for reasons of taste, culture, and religion, so its presence describes the drawing rather than the person.

No option is tied to a gender unless the style's designer deliberately built it that way. The options describe features such as hair or glasses, and what you make of them is up to you.