favicon-cheat-sheet

A painfully obsessive cheat sheet to favicon sizes/types. Compiled from:

• http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/rel-shortcut-icon <-- special thanks @mathiasbynens
• http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/touch-icons <-- special thanks @mathiasbynens
• http://www.jonathantneal.com/blog/understand-the-favicon/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon.ico
• http://snook.ca/archives/design/making_a_good_favicon
• http://www.netmagazine.com/features/create-perfect-favicon
• http://www.ravelrumba.com/blog/android-apple-touch-icon/
• http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ie/gg491740(v=vs.85).aspx

The HTML

Basics

For the main favicon itself, it's best for cross-browser compatibility not to use any HTML. Just name the file favicon.ico and place it in the root of your domain. [1] [2]

This works in every desktop browser/version all the way back to IE6, except for SeaMonkey. [1]

Optional But Encouraged

You probably also want the following:

1. Touch icon for iOS 2.0+ and Android 2.1+:

   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="path/to/favicon-152.png">

2. IE 10 Metro tile icon (Metro equivalent of apple-touch-icon):

   <meta name="msapplication-TileColor" content="#FFFFFF">
   <meta name="msapplication-TileImage" content="/path/to/favicon-144.png">

   Replace #FFFFFF with your desired tile color.

Very Optional, for the Obsessive

If you're obsessive, you want all this too:

1. Largest to smallest apple-touch-icons [3]:

   <!-- For iPad with high-resolution Retina display running iOS ≥ 7: -->
   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="152x152" href="/path/to/favicon-152.png">
   
   <!-- For iPad with high-resolution Retina display running iOS ≤ 6: -->
   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="144x144" href="/path/to/favicon-144.png">
   
   <!-- For iPhone with high-resolution Retina display running iOS ≥ 7: -->
   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="120x120" href="/path/to/favicon-120.png">
   
   <!-- For iPhone with high-resolution Retina display running iOS ≤ 6: -->
   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="114x114" href="/path/to/favicon-114.png">
   
   <!-- For first- and second-generation iPad: -->
   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" sizes="72x72" href="/path/to/favicon-72.png">
   
   <!-- For non-Retina iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android 2.1+ devices: -->
   <link rel="apple-touch-icon-precomposed" href="/path/to/favicon-57.png">

2. Favicons targeted to any additional png sizes that you add that aren't covered above:

   <link rel="icon" href="/path/to/favicon-32.png" sizes="32x32">

The Images

Create at least this:

Sizes	Name	Purpose
16x16 & 32x32	favicon.ico	Default required by IE. Chrome and Safari may pick ico over png, sadly.

More about favicon.ico below. Yes, it's 1 file with multiple sizes.

If you also sort of care about iOS and Android but are lazy:

Size	Name	Purpose
152x152	favicon-152.png	General use iOS/Android icon, auto-downscaled by devices.

But keep in mind that icons with complex detail often don't downscale well. Often you have to tweak subtle design details for smaller sizes.

If you're obsessive, create these too:

Size	Name	Purpose
32x32	favicon-32.png	Certain old but not too old Chrome versions mishandle ico
57x57	favicon-57.png	Standard iOS home screen (iPod Touch, iPhone first generation to 3G)
72x72	favicon-72.png	iPad home screen icon
96x96	favicon-96.png	GoogleTV icon
120x120	favicon-120.png	iPhone retina touch icon (Change for iOS 7: up from 114x114)
128x128	favicon-128.png	Chrome Web Store icon
144x144	favicon-144.png	IE10 Metro tile for pinned site
152x152	favicon-152.png	iPad retina touch icon (Change for iOS 7: up from 144x144)
195x195	favicon-195.png	Opera Speed Dial icon

ICO File

An .ico file contains an icon at multiple sizes. In favicon.ico, create at least these:

Size	Purpose
16x16	IE9 address bar, Pinned site Jump List/Toolbar/Overlay
32x32	New tab page in IE, taskbar button in Win 7+, Safari Read Later sidebar
64x64	Windows site icons [4], Safari Read Later sidebar in HiDPI/Retina

If you're obsessive and don't mind 1-3kb extra size, also include these sizes in your .ico:

Size	Purpose
48x48	Windows site icons [4]

Helpful Tools

I haven't tried them all, so use at your own risk.

• MSDN recommends this web-based .ico creator: http://www.xiconeditor.com
• Resize favicons: http://faviconer.com
• More resizing: https://github.com/abrkn/icon
• Creating .ico files: http://www.imagemagick.org/Usage/thumbnails/#favicon
• Dynamically setting favicons: https://github.com/HenrikJoreteg/favicon-setter
• Fancy favicon tricks: https://github.com/component/piecon
• Web Icon - a simple shell script that generates favicon and touch icons: https://github.com/emarref/webicon

Forcing a Favicon Refresh

• For yourself: Clear the browser cache (Ctrl+F5 or Ctrl+Shift+R).

  • Also close and reopen browser if IE.
  • If still stuck, try opening new tab. Or see http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2208933/how-do-i-force-a-favicon-refresh

• For yourself and all site visitors: Append a query string. (TODO: find out if any browsers have problems with this.)

  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico?v=2" />

• Some proxies and load balancers can fail to read query strings in edge cases. For large versioned deployments, put your version number in the filename.

  <link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/favicon-v2.ico" />

FAQ

Why use png in addition to ico?

Is it true that favicons should be in the site root? No, that's only if you don't explicitly specify the browser/device-specific <link> tags with a favicon path. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon.ico.

If you don't have favicon.ico in the root consider adding one, or returning a HTTP 204 instead. Many tools and services e.g. bookmarking sites, feed readers, web crawlers etc., request a favicon.ico from the site root, and so recieve a HTTP 404 if it's not present. In the worst case some frameworks will return a custom error page which is likely to be many times larger than the missing favicon.

Is it true that the png has to be named favicon.png? No, this has never been true as far as I can tell from my obsessive research.

Is it true that the ico has to be named favicon.ico? If you don't explicitly specify its <link> tag, yes. Explicitness is best, so we both name it favicon.ico and explicitly specify the <link> tag.

Why not prefix with "apple-touch-icon"? If you don't specify <link> tags, iOS looks for files prefixed with apple-touch-icon or apple-touch-icon-precomposed. Many (e.g. HTML5 Boilerplate) rely on this assumption, but:

• Explicitly specifying <link> tags is clearer and supported by Apple.
• Not hard-coding names as apple-touch-icon clears up confusion as to whether the same icons can be reused for other purposes as-is, e.g. reusing favicon-144.png for Windows pinned site.

Why use iOS precomposed icons?

• iOS non-precomposed icons add rounded corners, drop shadow, and reflective shine. Sounds great in theory, but in practice the results can be very frustrating, especially to designers.
• Non-precomposed icons don't work with Android 2.1.

Why absolute paths? Some Firefox versions require absolute paths. Since all browsers support them, it's the simplest choice.

Contribute!

Send pull requests if you have anything to add/change, providing citations and justification. I'd love to see this improve.

References

[1]	(1, 2) http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/rel-shortcut-icon

[2]	http://www.w3.org/html/wg/drafts/html/CR/links.html#rel-icon

[3]	Adapted from http://mathiasbynens.be/notes/touch-icons

[4]	(1, 2) No specifics given by MSDN.