Convert SVG to ICO - Every Size Drawn From the Vector
An ICO is not one image, it is a container holding several, and a browser picks whichever one suits the place it is drawing. This tool fills it with six: 16, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 pixels square. What makes starting from an SVG worth doing is that each of those is drawn from your original geometry at its own size, rather than rendered once at 256 and shrunk five times. That distinction is the whole reason to convert from vector, and on artwork with hard edges it is the difference between a legible icon and a grey smudge - we measured it, and the numbers are on this page. Everything runs on your own device: the file is read by your browser, rendered six times, packed into an ICO, and handed back. Nothing is uploaded and nothing is stored.
How to use this tool
Drop in your SVG
Drag an SVG onto the box above or click to browse, up to 5 MB. The file is checked by its contents rather than its name, so something mislabelled is refused rather than half-rendered.
Look at the 16 pixel preview
The panel shows your artwork at 16, 32 and 48 pixels, at actual size, rendered through the same path as the real output. If the 16 pixel version is unreadable here, it will be unreadable in a browser tab, and no converter can fix that for you.
Create the ICO
Click Create the ICO. Your drawing is rendered six separate times - 16, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 pixels - and each render is encoded as a PNG and packed into the container, largest entry first.
Save it as favicon.ico
Download the file and put it in your site's root directory. Browsers, Windows shortcuts and feed readers all ask for /favicon.ico by convention, and each one picks whichever size in the container suits the place it is showing the icon.
Frequently Asked Questions
Which sizes end up inside the file?
Six: 16, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 pixels square. Sixteen is the browser tab, 32 the taskbar and bookmark bar, 48 the Windows desktop, and the larger three cover high-density displays and the big-icon views in Windows Explorer. Each one is a full PNG stored inside the container.
Why does rendering each size separately matter?
Because downsampling averages detail away. We rendered a pixel-art mark both ways at 16 × 16: drawn straight from the vector it produced 141 fully solid pixels and zero half-transparent ones. Shrunk from a 512 pixel render, the same 16 × 16 grid held 98 solid pixels and 64 partly transparent ones - 40% of the ink turned to blur.
Will it always look sharper than a downscaled version?
No, and it is worth knowing when. The gain is large for artwork with edges that land on the pixel grid: geometric marks, pixel art, anything using shape-rendering. For a thin stroked line icon the two are nearly identical, because a 2-unit stroke on a 24-unit canvas is under one and a half pixels at 16 either way.
Do I still need an ICO in 2026?
Yes, as a fallback rather than as the main event. Every current browser prefers an SVG or PNG favicon if you declare one, but Windows shortcuts, RSS readers, and a long tail of embedded browsers still request /favicon.ico directly. It is a small file that stops a broken icon appearing in places you never test.
Is transparency preserved?
Yes. Each size is stored as a PNG inside the container, complete with its alpha channel, so anywhere your SVG paints nothing stays transparent. That matters more for icons than for anything else, because browser tabs, taskbars and bookmark bars are all different colours and a white box shows on every one of them.
My 16 pixel preview is unreadable - what should I do?
Simplify, do not sharpen. At 16 pixels you have 256 of them in total, so fine strokes, small text and tight detail cannot survive. Most good icons are a single bold shape at that size. Draw a dedicated simplified version for small use rather than hoping a converter can rescue the detailed one.
Why is the largest size written first in the file?
Because some Windows shell versions take the first entry they can use rather than searching for the best match. Writing the 256 pixel image first means those pick the high-resolution version, and every other consumer reads the whole directory and chooses correctly anyway. It costs nothing and avoids a class of bug you cannot see.
Can an ICO hold sizes above 256 pixels?
No. The directory entry stores width and height in a single byte each, so 256 is the ceiling - and it is stored as zero, which is the format's one real quirk. For anything larger you want a PNG: use our SVG to PNG tool and set whatever pixel size you need.
Can I use the same ICO for a Windows desktop app?
Yes - the container this produces is a standard multi-size ICO, which is exactly what a Windows executable's resource section expects. Point your installer or build tool at it. Note that 256 pixel entries are stored as PNG rather than raw bitmap data, which Windows Vista and everything since reads without complaint.
Do you upload my file?
No. The rendering, encoding and packing all happen in your browser. Your artwork is never sent to a server, never written to disk anywhere but your own downloads folder, and there is no queue - the only limit on speed is your device.
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