Every favicon file, from one image
This favicon generator turns one image — or a letter on a coloured square — into the full set of icon
files a modern site needs, together with the site.webmanifest and the lines for your <head>. The
drawing, the ICO container and the optional ZIP are all produced inside your browser, so your logo
never leaves your computer.
How to use it
- Drop a square image, ideally 512×512 or larger, or switch to Letter on a colour.
- For non-square images, choose between fitting the whole picture with a margin and cropping the centre.
- Fill in the site name, short name and theme colour for the manifest.
- Download each file, or everything at once as a ZIP, and place the files at the root of your site.
- Paste the HTML snippet into the
<head>of every page.
The five files and why each exists
favicon.ico carries three images: 16 pixels for browser tabs, 32 for high-density tabs and the taskbar, and 48 for Windows shortcuts. Browsers request it from the site root even when no tag points to it, which is why a missing one fills server logs with 404s.
apple-touch-icon.png is the apple touch icon size iOS expects: 180×180. It is what appears when someone adds your page to a home screen. iOS rounds the corners itself and fills any transparency with black, so give it a solid background — untick Transparent background before downloading if your logo has see-through areas.
icon-192.png and icon-512.png are the site.webmanifest icons. Android uses them for the home screen and the splash screen of an installed web app, and Chrome will not consider a site installable without both sizes declared.
site.webmanifest is a small JSON file naming the site, pointing to those two icons and setting the theme and background colours used around the app. The theme colour also tints the browser toolbar on Android.
Inside the .ico file
The ICO format is older than the web but simple: a six-byte header saying "this is an icon, with N images", then a sixteen-byte directory entry for each image recording its width, height, colour depth, byte length and where its data starts, then the image data itself. Since Windows Vista the image data can be a complete PNG, which is what this favicon.ico generator writes. The result is small, sharp at each size, and readable by every browser in use today.
Designing for 16 pixels
A detailed logo turns to mush at 16×16. The icons that work are bold and simple: one letter, a single shape, strong contrast. If your full logo does not survive the smallest preview above, use the letter mode, or crop your mark to its most recognisable part. Check the result on both a light and a dark browser theme; a transparent icon with dark lines can disappear on a dark tab bar.
Favicons are one part of how a page presents itself outside your site. The meta tag generator covers the title and description, and the open graph generator sets the image shown when the page is shared.