Favicon Sizes in 2026: What You Actually Need
The list of recommended favicon sizes has been growing for ten years. Here's the short, current list — three files cover almost everything.
Every favicon generator I tested produces between 12 and 20 files. You don't need 12 to 20 files. Here's the short list that covers basically every device that will see your site in 2026.
favicon.ico (multi-resolution, 16x16 and 32x32 inside). Still required for old browsers, RSS readers, and the small tab and bookmark icons in most desktop browsers. Modern browsers will use SVG if available, but ico is the safe fallback.
favicon.svg. A single SVG covers high-DPI displays at any size without the pixelation that haunted PNG favicons for years. Browsers that support it (every modern one) will use this in preference to ico.
apple-touch-icon.png at 180x180. Used by iOS when adding to home screen, and by Android browsers as a fallback. Only one size needed — iOS will scale it down for smaller surfaces.
That's three files. Optionally:
A web app manifest entry pointing to two PWA icons (192x192 and 512x512) if you want your site to be installable as a PWA. If you don't, skip them.
What you can drop from the old recommendations: separate sizes for every Android density (one 192x192 is enough), the 70x70 / 144x144 / 150x150 Microsoft tile sizes (almost no traffic comes from pinned IE/Edge tiles anymore), and the dozen separate apple-touch-icon-Nx.png variants (180x180 alone covers all current iOS devices).
The one exception: if your brand icon has a lot of fine detail that doesn't scale down well, generating a hand-tuned 16x16 and 32x32 PNG can look noticeably better than letting the browser scale your SVG. That's the only case I'd add files back.
Our favicon generator outputs exactly the three core files plus an optional manifest. Drop in a square PNG or SVG and download a clean set — none of the legacy bloat.