Prepare a favicon pack for your game website
A favicon is the small symbol representing a website in a browser tab. Detailed game artwork can become unreadable at 16 pixels. Start with one letter, a simple emblem or a strong silhouette rather than a full title or character portrait. This tool turns your source image into PNG sizes, a real ICO file, HTML tags and a web manifest sample.
Which file goes where?
- favicon.ico: contains 16, 32 and 48 pixel images in one file.
- icon-16.png, icon-32.png and icon-48.png: small-size inspection and PNG icon use.
- icon-180.png: a square output for the apple-touch-icon tag.
- icon-192.png and icon-512.png: the images referenced by the sample web manifest.
The ICO is not a renamed PNG. It has a directory of image sizes and embedded PNG images. Very old icon editors may not support this modern ICO representation.
Example: turning a wide logo into a square icon
Fit an 800 × 400 logo into a 32 × 32 output and the logo occupies 32 × 16 pixels, leaving space above and below. Center crop fills the square but can cut off the sides. Compare fit for a wordmark with crop for a single centered symbol. Ten percent padding on each side leaves an inner square measuring 80 percent of the output width.
Install the pack on your website
- Choose a simple source at least 512 × 512 pixels. Enlarging a smaller source does not add detail.
- Choose transparency or a solid background. Consider a separate opaque version for the Apple home screen.
- Generate the pack and inspect the 16 and 32 pixel outputs closely.
- Extract the ZIP and place its contents in /icons/ on your website.
- Add the tags from head.html to the page head. If your site already has a manifest, adapt its icon entries instead of introducing another manifest.
Image URLs inside the manifest are relative to that manifest file. Update the HTML paths if you move the folder. An old favicon may remain cached; open the image URL directly to check which file your server is providing.
Transparency, mobile appearance and limits
The mobile preview is illustrative. Operating systems can apply different shapes and backgrounds. Exports are not marked as maskable; that requires a separate safe-area design. The manifest sample contains only the name and icon entries and does not make a PWA installable by itself. Native app stores have separate submission requirements.
Images are not uploaded to a server. Static PNG, JPEG and WebP are supported; SVG and animation are not accepted. Input limits are 10 MiB, 16 million pixels and 8192 pixels per side. Color profile and metadata preservation are not guaranteed.
Technical references: Microsoft on PNG images inside ICO and MDN on manifest icon entries. Choose colors with the Game Color Palette Generator or inspect a manifest with the JSON Formatter.
