What is a favicon?
By Ash, Founder, HosteazePublished 2 min read
The short answer
A favicon is the small square icon that represents your website in browser tabs, bookmarks, phone home screens and Google search results. You add it with a link tag in your page's head, or through your site builder's settings. Start from a square image at least 512 pixels wide and keep the design simple.
A favicon (short for "favourite icon") is the tiny picture next to your page title in a browser tab. It also turns up in bookmarks, on phone home screens when someone saves your site, and beside your listing in Google's mobile and desktop results. It's small, but a missing one makes a site look unfinished, a bit like a shop with no sign over the door.
Where does a favicon appear?
| Place | Typical size shown | What it needs from you |
|---|---|---|
| Browser tab and bookmarks | Usually 16 pixels | A rel="icon" link, or a /favicon.ico file |
| Google search results | Small, scaled down | A square icon at least 8x8 pixels, ideally larger than 48x48, linked from your home page |
| iPhone or iPad home screen | Larger | An apple-touch-icon link |
| Android home screen (installed web app) | 192 and 512 pixels | Icons listed in a web app manifest |
Google only supports one favicon per hostname. So shop.example.co.uk can have its own icon, but example.co.uk/shop uses the main site's.
What size and format should a favicon be?
Design one square master image at 512 x 512 pixels and let your platform or a generator make the smaller copies. That covers WordPress, which asks for a square image at least 512 pixels wide, and Chrome's install icons at 192 and 512 pixels.
As of October 2026, Google Search accepts BMP, GIF, ICO, PNG, JPEG, PPM and TIFF favicons. PNG is the safe choice for most sites. Keep the file at a stable URL, because Google asks you not to change it often.
Design for 16 pixels, not 512. One bold letter or symbol, strong contrast, no fine text. Look at it in a real tab before you call it done.
How do I add a favicon to my site?
Most platforms do it for you:
- WordPress 6.5 and later: go to Settings > General, click Choose a Site Icon and pick your square image.
- Older WordPress versions: go to Appearance > Customize > Site Identity and choose an image under Site Icon.
- Hand-coded sites: upload the file and add
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png">inside the<head>of every page, including the home page.
Then open your site in a private window to check the tab icon, and request indexing of your home page in Google Search Console if you want Google to pick it up sooner.
Is a favicon part of my brand?
Yes. It's often the first glimpse of your brand identity a searcher sees, so take it from your logo and colours rather than inventing something new. If you're still choosing those, see how to choose brand colours and add the favicon to your website launch checklist.
More plain-English guides are in Email and domains.
Frequently asked questions
Why isn't my favicon showing in Google?
Google has to recrawl your home page first, which can take from several days to several weeks. Check the icon is square, at least 8x8 pixels (ideally larger than 48x48), in a supported format, linked from the home page, and not blocked in robots.txt. Even then, Google doesn't guarantee it will show one.
Can I just use my full logo as a favicon?
Usually not. A wide logo with a business name becomes an unreadable smudge at 16 pixels. Use a single letter, a symbol from your logo, or a simplified mark on a solid background instead.
Do I still need a favicon.ico file?
It's a sensible fallback. If a page doesn't declare an icon, browsers look for /favicon.ico in the root of your site, so keeping one there avoids a blank tab icon and stops error entries piling up in your logs.