How to make a favicon.ico
- Start from a square logo, 256 × 256 px or larger, ideally a PNG or SVG with a transparent background.
- Add it here. The ICO gets 16, 24, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 px icons (sizes larger than your image are left out). A non-square image is centred on a transparent square.
- Upload favicon.ico to the root of your website, next to index.html. Browsers look for /favicon.ico automatically.
Which sizes are used where
| Size | Where it shows |
|---|---|
| 16 × 16 | Browser tabs and bookmarks on a standard screen |
| 32 × 32 | The same places on a high-resolution (2×) screen |
| 16–64 | Windows title bars, context menus and the system tray, depending on display scaling |
| 24–96 | The Windows taskbar and search results |
| 32–256 | Windows Start pins |
Windows sizes from Microsoft’s app icon guidelines (read 28 October 2026), which ask for at least 16, 24, 32, 48 and 256 px.
Modern browsers also accept a PNG or SVG favicon declared with <link rel="icon">; an ICO at /favicon.ico is still the one file that works everywhere, including older browsers and tools that fetch it without reading your HTML.
Tips for a sharp small icon
- Simplify for 16 px: a single letter or symbol reads better than a full logo with text.
- Keep some contrast against both light and dark browser tabs.
- Crop away empty space first with Crop, so the symbol fills the square.
Measured with Kilomill
An 800 × 600 transparent PNG logo (29.4 KB) became an 18.9 KB favicon.ico holding all seven sizes from 16 to 256 px, with transparent padding top and bottom to make it square.
Measured 28 Oct 2026 · test images and setup
Other conversions
Other formats from PNG: PNG to JPG · PNG to WebP
Any other pair, including TIFF, PSD, RAW and SVG to WebP or AVIF, or any image to GIF, PDF, ICO or TIFF: image converter.