Favicon Sizes — Complete Cheat Sheet
Every favicon size that matters in 2026 — and the four files that cover them all.
No signup, no trackingFavicon guides love to list fifteen sizes and thirty link tags, most of which stopped mattering years ago. The honest answer is shorter: four files cover every browser, every phone home screen, and Google’s search results. This page is the lookup table — what each size is actually for, which ones are legacy, and the exact HTML to paste.
Verified against current browser behavior in August 2026. If you just want the files, the favicon generator on this site builds the multi-size .ico and the PNGs in your browser — no upload, no signup.
The four files that cover everything
A modern site needs exactly four icon files: a favicon.ico at the site root (16, 32 and 48 px inside one container), an SVG icon for browsers that scale, a 180×180 apple-touch-icon for iOS home screens, and a web app manifest pointing at 192 and 512 px PNGs. This is the complete head markup:
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="32x32">
<link rel="icon" href="/icon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.webmanifest">Browsers that understand SVG pick the vector and stay sharp at any density; older ones fall back to the .ico. iOS reads the apple-touch-icon, Android reads the manifest. Everything else on this page explains what goes inside those files.
Complete favicon size table
| Size (px) | File | Where it shows up |
|---|---|---|
| 16 × 16 | favicon.ico | Browser tab, address bar, bookmark lists — the size people actually see most. |
| 32 × 32 | favicon.ico | Retina browser tabs, Windows taskbar shortcuts. |
| 48 × 48 | favicon.ico | Windows desktop shortcuts; also the base unit Google uses for search result icons. |
| 64–256 | favicon.ico (optional) | High-DPI desktop shortcuts and app icons. Nice to have, not required for the web. |
| 180 × 180 | apple-touch-icon.png | iPhone and iPad home screen. One 180 px file covers every modern iOS device. |
| 192 × 192 | manifest PNG | Android Chrome home-screen icon. |
| 512 × 512 | manifest PNG | PWA install prompt and splash screen. |
| Any (vector) | icon.svg | Scalable favicon for Chrome, Edge and Firefox; stays sharp on every display. |
Legacy sizes you can skip in 2026: the old Apple set (57, 72, 76, 114, 120, 144, 152, 167 px) is fully covered by the single 180 px icon, because iOS picks the nearest larger icon it finds. Microsoft’s browserconfig.xml tile sizes (70, 150, 310 px) died with Internet Explorer and Edge Legacy.
favicon.ico: still not optional
Every browser still requests /favicon.ico from the site root by default — before reading your HTML, and even on pages that declare other icons. If the file is missing you collect an endless stream of 404s in your logs, and anything that fetches icons without parsing HTML (RSS readers, older crawlers, bookmark services) shows a blank sheet instead of your mark.
ICO is a container format, not a single image: one .ico file holds several resolutions and the consumer picks the one it wants. The standard web set is 16 + 32 + 48. If the same file will also serve as a Windows application icon, add 256 — that is the set Microsoft documents for Explorer and app icons.
ICO vs PNG vs SVG
| Format | Support | Use it for |
|---|---|---|
| ICO | Universal, including every legacy browser and Windows itself. | The root favicon.ico. The safe fallback that always works. |
| PNG | Universal in link tags. | apple-touch-icon and the 192/512 manifest icons. Simple and lossless. |
| SVG | Chrome, Edge, Firefox. Safari still ignores SVG favicons. | The modern scalable favicon — one tiny file, sharp everywhere it is supported. Always keep an ICO or PNG fallback for Safari. |
Favicons in Google search results
Google shows favicons next to results on mobile and desktop, which quietly makes the favicon a search asset. The documented requirements: the icon must be square, at least 8×8 px but ideally a multiple of 48×48 (Google re-scales from there), hosted at a stable URL that does not change often, and crawlable — if robots.txt blocks the icon or the homepage, Google falls back to a generic globe.
A multi-size favicon.ico that includes 48×48 satisfies this automatically. If your icon changed and search still shows the old one, Google refreshes favicons on its own crawl schedule — typically days to weeks; requesting a recrawl of the homepage can nudge it.
Common mistakes
- Using the full logo. At 16×16 a wordmark turns to grey mush. Crop to one letter, one glyph or one strong shape before generating anything, and judge the 16 px preview — that is what people see.
- Serving only a 16 px icon. Retina tabs render it blurry; always include 32 px in the .ico.
- Shipping SVG only. Safari ignores SVG favicons entirely — without an ICO or PNG fallback, Safari users see a blank sheet.
- Forgetting the root file. Icons declared only in link tags still leave /favicon.ico 404ing for every client that requests it blindly.
- Ignoring dark browser themes. A near-black mark disappears on a dark tab bar. Test against both, or add a subtle outline / background shape.
- Moving the icon URL on every deploy. Google associates the favicon with a stable URL; a hash-busted path (icon.3f2a1.png) can delay SERP icon updates for weeks.
Generate the files
The favicon generator on this site turns any PNG, JPG, WebP or SVG into a multi-size favicon.ico (16 through 256 px) plus standalone PNGs, entirely in your browser — nothing is uploaded, no account, no watermark. For the 180, 192 and 512 px PNGs, the image resizer produces exact dimensions the same way. Crop the logo square first with the image cropper if it is not already.