avicon

The favicon.tools blog

Sizes, formats, framework setup, and the nine reasons a favicon quietly stops showing up. Written to actually answer the question, not to rank for it.

27 guides by Abdessamad Bettal · RSS

Tutorial

Changing the Favicon on Webflow, Squarespace, Wix and Ghost

Where the favicon setting hides in each platform, what size each one wants, and how to add the icons the built-in uploader doesn't cover.

6 min read

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Tutorial

How to Add a Favicon to a Vue or Nuxt App (The Right Way)

Where favicon files go in a Vite-powered Vue project and in Nuxt, how to declare them without fighting the build, and why the default Vite favicon keeps coming back.

6 min read

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Fundamentals

Maskable Icons Explained: Why Your PWA Icon Gets Cropped on Android

What the maskable purpose in a web app manifest actually does, how big the safe zone is, and how to ship maskable and standard icons without one ruining the other.

6 min read

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Fundamentals

The Legacy Favicon Tags You Can Finally Delete (And the Four You Can't)

Most favicon snippets on the web still carry a decade of dead tags: mask-icon, browserconfig.xml, msapplication-*, precomposed icons. Here's what each one did and which are still doing work.

6 min read

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Fundamentals

How Browsers Actually Decide Which Favicon to Show

Declare five icons and the browser displays one. The selection rules aren't the order you wrote them in — here's what governs the choice, and why two sites with identical markup can show different icons.

7 min read

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Design

Dark Mode Favicons: How to Make One Icon Work on Both Themes

How to build a favicon that adapts to light and dark browser themes using an SVG media query — and why the safer answer is usually an icon that never needs to.

7 min read

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Tutorial

Adding a Favicon in Astro and SvelteKit

The static directory, the layout file and the head tags for both frameworks — plus the base-path and adapter gotchas that break favicons on deploy.

5 min read

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Tutorial

How to Add a Favicon in WordPress Without a Plugin

WordPress calls it a "site icon" — here's how to set one properly, with or without the block editor.

4 min read

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Fundamentals

The Web App Manifest, Explained: Icons, Theme Color and PWA Installs

What site.webmanifest actually does, which fields matter for icons, and how to get it right.

5 min read

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Tutorial

How to Set a Favicon on Shopify (Theme Editor Guide)

Where Shopify hides the favicon setting, what size to upload, and how to confirm it's live.

4 min read

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Tutorial

How to Add a Favicon to a React App (Vite and Create React App)

Where favicon files actually live in a Vite or CRA project, and how to wire up every size correctly.

4 min read

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Tutorial

How to Add a Favicon to a Next.js App (App Router)

The exact files and folder structure Next.js's App Router expects for a favicon, step by step.

5 min read

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Tutorial

How to Add a Favicon to a Static HTML Site

The exact <link> tags a plain HTML site needs in <head>, explained line by line.

5 min read

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Fundamentals

The History of the Favicon: From Internet Explorer 5 to PWAs

How a 16-pixel Microsoft afterthought in 1999 became one of the most-requested files on the web.

5 min read

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Troubleshooting

Google Search Console Favicon Not Showing: How to Fix It

Google has its own strict favicon rules, separate from what your browser accepts — here's how to meet them.

4 min read

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Fundamentals

Favicon vs Apple Touch Icon vs App Icon: What's the Difference?

Three names, three jobs — how favicons, Apple touch icons and app icons differ, and why a site needs all three.

5 min read

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Fundamentals

The Complete Favicon Size Guide for 2026 (16px to 512px)

Every favicon size a modern site actually needs, what each one is for, and which file to export it as.

4 min read

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SEO

Favicon and SEO: Does It Actually Affect Rankings?

What a favicon can and can't do for search rankings — and the real, indirect ways it affects clicks.

4 min read

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Troubleshooting

Why Isn't My Favicon Showing Up? 9 Common Causes and Fixes

The nine most common reasons a favicon refuses to appear, in the order you should actually check them.

5 min read

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Fundamentals

Do You Still Need a favicon.ico File in 2026?

PNG and SVG favicons are everywhere now — here's why the humble .ico file still refuses to die.

4 min read

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Fundamentals

PNG vs SVG vs ICO: Which Favicon Format Should You Use?

A practical, no-nonsense comparison of the three favicon formats and when to reach for each one.

4 min read

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Design

How to Design a Favicon That Works at 16 Pixels

What survives being shrunk to a 16-by-16-pixel square, and what quietly turns into a smudge.

5 min read

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Design

Favicon Color Theory: Making Your Tab Stand Out

How color choice affects whether your favicon gets noticed in a crowded row of browser tabs.

4 min read

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Troubleshooting

Favicon Not Updating? How to Bust the Browser Cache

Favicons are cached harder than almost anything else on the web — here's how to force a fresh one.

4 min read

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Troubleshooting

Why Your Favicon Looks Broken on iPhone (and How to Fix It)

iOS ignores favicon.ico completely — what it actually reads instead, and how to fix a black or blank home-screen icon.

4 min read

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Troubleshooting

Favicon Showing a 404 in the Console: How to Fix It

That harmless-looking favicon.ico 404 in your console isn't actually harmless — here's how to clear it for good.

4 min read

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Design

Emoji as a Favicon: A Legit (and Free) Logo Alternative

No logo yet? An emoji favicon is a genuinely good placeholder — here's how to pick one that works.

4 min read

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