Which Favicon Sizes Do You Actually Need in 2026?

Search for a favicon checklist and you will be told to generate sixteen files, including Windows tile images nobody has seen since 2015. The real list is much shorter.

The list that matters

• favicon.ico containing 16, 32 and 48 px. Browsers still request/favicon.ico by default, and Windows shortcuts use it.
• favicon-32.png — what most desktop browsers actually display in the tab on a standard-density screen.
• apple-touch-icon.png at 180 px — iOS home screens. No transparency: iOS composites onto a rounded square, and alpha turns black.
• 192 px and 512 px PNGs referenced from the web manifest, for Android and installable web apps.

That is five files, and the favicon generator produces all of them from one logo along with the markup.

The HTML

Order matters less than completeness; browsers pick the best match they understand:

<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="any"> plus the PNG variants and <link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">.

Designing for a 16-pixel square

At tab size you have roughly 14 usable pixels. Wordmarks vanish. What survives: one bold letter, a simple geometric shape, or a strong silhouette with high contrast against both light and dark tab bars. If your brand mark is intricate, make a simplified variant for the small sizes and keep the detailed one for 512 px — nobody will notice they differ, and everybody notices a blurry tab icon.

SVG favicons

<link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml"> works in every current browser and can even adapt to dark mode with a media query inside the SVG. Ship it as an enhancement, but keep the ICO — some tools, feed readers and crawlers only look for that.