Favicon generator

Every size you need, and a check that it still reads at 16 pixels.

Or drop it here, or paste. PNG, JPEG or SVG, 512 pixels or larger, ideally square. Nothing is uploaded.

Manifest

Add your mark, or try the sample, to start.

What favicon is

The small icon a browser shows in a tab, a bookmark and a home screen. It is unusual among brand assets in being authored at 512 pixels and seen almost always at 16, which makes the interesting question not how to export it but whether anything survives the downscale.

What this tool does that others do not

  • A legibility figure at 16 pixels

    The tool measures how much of your mark’s structure survives the downscale and renders it at actual size, rather than handing you a zip and wishing you luck. Sixteen pixels square is 256 pixels in total, which is not enough for a wordmark, a thin stroke or most of what makes a logo recognisable at any other size.

  • Checked against both tab strips

    The tab strip is light in a default browser and dark in dark mode, and a near-black mark that reads perfectly on one disappears on the other. Both contrast figures are given, with the icon shown at actual size on each.

  • The sizes that are still read, and no more

    A 32px ICO covers browser tabs including older Windows cases, a 180px PNG covers the iOS home screen, and 192 and 512px PNGs cover Android and install prompts through the web manifest. The twenty-plus-file lists older tools produce are largely legacy — Windows tile images and the older Apple sizes are no longer read by anything current.

    ICO is built at 16, 32 and 48; PNGs at 16, 32, 48, 180, 192 and 512.

  • An ICO that wraps PNG data

    A favicon.ico at the site root is still requested by default and by assorted crawlers and feed readers, so shipping one avoids a stream of 404s. Wrapping PNG data inside it has been valid since Windows Vista and keeps the file small.

How to use it

  1. Drop in the largest version of the mark you have

    Everything is generated downward from it, so a 512px source gives the downscaler something to work with.

  2. Read the detail figure before the preview

    The preview at 16 pixels is small enough that your eye will fill in what it knows is there. The figure will not.

  3. If it collapses, change the mark rather than the export

    A single letter, a cropped fragment of the logo, or a simplified silhouette. There is no export setting that recovers detail from 256 pixels.

  4. Take the head markup and the manifest with the files

    They are generated alongside, which is what stops a correct set of files being declared incorrectly.

Worked examples

Real input, real figures.

A three-letter wordmark at tab size

You give it

A wordmark exported at 512 pixels.

You get

16 × 16 is 256 pixels in total, roughly 85 per letter once the gaps are counted. The detail figure reports how little of the structure survives, and the working answer is a single-letter mark rather than a better resampler.

An icon that vanishes in dark mode

You give it

A near-black mark on a transparent background.

You get

High contrast against the light tab strip and almost none against the dark one. Both figures are shown side by side, which is what makes the problem visible before it ships rather than after someone mentions it.

Against a typical favicon generator

AspectThis toolA typical generator
OutputThe sizes still read, plus manifest and head markupTwenty-plus files, many legacy
LegibilityMeasured at 16 pixelsNot assessed
Dark modeContrast against both tab stripsNot considered
ICOPNG-in-ICO, smallBitmap ICO
UploadNone — drawn on a canvas in the tabImage posted to a server

Guide

Generating the sizes is the easy half

Resizing an image into six files is a solved problem, and every favicon tool does it identically. What almost none of them do is tell you whether the result works — and the favicon is unusual in that it is designed at 512 pixels and then seen, nearly every time, at 16.

Sixteen pixels square is 256 pixels in total. That is not enough for a wordmark, a thin stroke, or most of what makes a logo recognisable at any other size. So this tool measures how much of your mark's structure survives the downscale, checks it against both the light and dark tab strips, and shows it at actual size on each — rather than handing you a zip and wishing you luck.

Questions people ask

Straight answers. Each one links directly: copy the address after opening it.

Why does my logo look wrong as a favicon?

Almost always because it is being seen at 16 pixels and was designed at a much larger size. At 16 pixels you have 256 pixels in total to work with, so internal detail, thin strokes and any lettering collapse into a smudge. The usual fix is not a better export but a different mark: a single letter, a cropped fragment of the logo, or a simplified silhouette. The detail figure here measures how much of your mark’s structure actually survives the downscale rather than leaving you to squint at it.

Which sizes do I actually need?

Fewer than most generators produce. A 32px ICO covers browser tabs including older Windows cases, a 180px PNG covers the iOS home screen, and 192 and 512px PNGs cover Android and install prompts through the web manifest. The long lists of twenty-plus files that older tools generate are largely legacy: Windows tile images and the older Apple sizes are no longer read by anything current.

Why check contrast against two backgrounds?

Because the tab strip is light in a default browser and dark in dark mode, and a mark can be clearly visible on one and nearly invisible on the other. A near-black icon reads perfectly on light Chrome and disappears in dark mode, which is now the majority setting on mobile. Both figures are shown with the icon rendered at actual size on each.

Is an ICO file still necessary?

Yes, though only just. Modern browsers will happily use a PNG declared in a link tag, but a favicon.ico at the site root is still requested by default and by various crawlers and feed readers, so shipping one avoids a stream of 404s. The ICO produced here wraps PNG data, which has been valid since Windows Vista and keeps the file small.

Is my image uploaded?

No. Everything is drawn on a canvas in your browser and the zip is assembled locally. Nothing leaves the page.