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PNG to ICO Converter
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No file size limit · Processed in your browser
How to Convert PNG to ICO
- 1Click 'Choose File' or drag your PNG image into the drop zone
- 2Your browser generates an ICO file with 16×16 and 32×32 sizes
- 3Click 'Download ICO' and place the file in your website's root directory
Browsers look for your favicon in a specific sequence. First, they check for a link element in your HTML head: if you have a tag like <link rel='icon' href='/favicon.png'>, the browser fetches that file directly. If no such tag exists, the browser falls back to requesting /favicon.ico from the root of your domain — this is a hardcoded behavior in every major browser. Because of this fallback, placing a favicon.ico in your website's root directory provides favicon support even for pages that don't have an explicit link tag, including pages served by other software on your domain.
The ICO format was created by Microsoft for Windows icons and is technically a container format — a single .ico file can embed multiple images at different sizes. Browsers use different sizes in different contexts: 16×16 for browser tabs, 32×32 for bookmarks and taskbar pinning, larger sizes for progressive web app shortcuts. A proper favicon.ico contains at least the 16×16 and 32×32 versions so browsers can pick the right one. Serving a single-size PNG as a favicon works in most browsers but produces blurry results when a different size is needed.
Modern browsers also support PNG, SVG, and WebP favicons via the link tag. An SVG favicon scales perfectly to any size and is the best choice if your logo is available as an SVG. But ICO remains the safe universal fallback — it works in every browser including Internet Explorer, every desktop operating system, and every context where favicons are displayed. For sites targeting broad compatibility, placing both a favicon.ico (for the automatic fallback) and a higher-resolution PNG (referenced in the head) covers all cases.
For the conversion: start with a square PNG at 512×512 or 256×256 pixels. The converter scales it down to 32×32 and 16×16 using the browser's built-in image scaling and packages both sizes into a single .ico file. Downscaling from a high-resolution source produces sharper small icons than upscaling from a small one. At 16×16 pixels — the size displayed in a browser tab — only about 3 to 4 significant visual elements can be recognized, so a simple design (a letter, a geometric shape, a bold symbol) will read more clearly than a detailed logo.