What a favicon set actually needs in 2026
The single favicon.ico in a site root is a relic. A site today is rendered as a tab in a browser, a bookmark tile, an icon on an iOS home screen, an Android launcher shortcut, and a splash screen for an installed progressive web app. Each of those surfaces wants a different pixel size, and several want a specific filename.
This generator renders your source at each of the sizes that still matter, writes a web manifest pointing at the two Android sizes, and hands you the HTML that ties them together. The result is a directory you copy into your public root and four lines you paste into your head — no build step, no configuration.
Why PNG rather than ICO
ICO is a container format that can hold several bitmaps at different resolutions in one file. It made sense when browsers looked for exactly one path and could not be told about sizes. Modern browsers instead read a list of link tags, each declaring its own size, and pick the one closest to what they need.
That means a set of plain PNGs is both simpler and more precise: you control exactly which bitmap is used at which size, rather than hoping the browser picks well from inside a container. It is also more robust — a malformed ICO fails silently, whereas a missing PNG shows up immediately as a 404 in your network panel.
Designing an icon that survives 16 pixels
A logo that reads beautifully on a landing page frequently turns to mush in a browser tab. At 16 pixels you have roughly the detail of a lowercase letter. Thin strokes disappear, gradients band, and anything more than about three shapes becomes noise.
The preview grid shows every generated size at close to its true scale, with smoothing turned off for the small ones, so you can see the aliasing rather than a flattering blur. If the 16px version is unreadable, the fix is a simplified mark for the icon — not a better downscaler.
Squares, padding and safe areas
Every target here is square. A non-square source is centred inside the square rather than stretched, because a squashed logo looks broken in a way a letterboxed one does not.
Android launchers may apply their own mask, cropping your icon to a circle or squircle depending on the device. If your mark runs to the very edge of the canvas, expect the corners to be trimmed. Leaving roughly ten percent of padding around the artwork in your source image is the usual defence.