Favicon Generator FAQ
Eight common questions · based on web standards · updated 2026-08-24
Frequently asked questions (8)
What favicon sizes do I actually need?
Browser tabs use 16 and 32px, Windows shortcuts use 48px, iOS home screens use 180px, and Android plus PWA use 192 and 512px. A multi-size favicon.ico holding 16·32·48 alongside PNGs at 180, 192 and 512 covers virtually every environment in use today. The "Recommended" preset in this tool produces exactly that combination.
Is my image uploaded to a server?
No. The file is read with the browser FileReader API, resized through Canvas, and the ICO and ZIP binaries are assembled by JavaScript running in the page. Not a single network request carries your image, and everything is released when you close the tab. Internal logos and unreleased brand assets are safe here.
Should I ship ICO or PNG?
Both. favicon.ico packs several resolutions into one file and is auto-discovered at the site root even without a link tag, which makes it a dependable fallback. PNGs are what you reference explicitly for apple-touch-icon and the manifest icons array. Shipping the two together is the standard setup.
How is a multi-size ICO actually structured?
The first six bytes form the ICONDIR header: a zero reserved field, a type of 1 for icon, and the image count. One 16-byte ICONDIRENTRY per image follows, recording width, height, bit depth, payload length and the byte offset where that image begins. The image payloads are appended after the entry table. Width and height are single bytes, so 256 is written as 0.
Can I keep a transparent background?
Yes — choose "Transparent" and the alpha channel is preserved end to end. Bear in mind that a black logo on transparency vanishes against a dark tab strip, and iOS fills transparent areas of apple-touch-icon with solid black. Give at least the 180px output an opaque background.
Can I upload an SVG?
Yes, and vectors downscale beautifully. One catch: an SVG without width and height attributes can report a natural size of zero, so this tool reads the viewBox ratio and injects explicit dimensions before rendering. SVGs that pull in external fonts or images will lose those referenced parts.
I replaced my favicon but the old one is still showing.
Favicon caching is separate from ordinary resource caching and unusually persistent, so a hard reload often changes nothing. Append a query string such as favicon.ico?v=2, or rename the file outright. Behind a CDN, invalidate the edge cache first; if you shipped an immutable cache header, renaming is the only remaining option.
My maskable icon looks cropped on Android.
Android crops icons declared with purpose maskable into a circle or squircle. Artwork that reaches the edges loses its corners. Raise the padding slider to roughly 15–20% to create a safe zone, then regenerate the 192 and 512px sizes.