What is a favicon?

A favicon (short for "favorite icon") is a small icon associated with a website, typically displayed in browser tabs, bookmarks, and address bars. These tiny images—usually 16×16 or 32×32 pixels—serve as visual identifiers that help users quickly recognize and locate websites among multiple open tabs or saved bookmarks.

Favicons were first introduced by Internet Explorer in 1999 and have since become a standard feature across all modern browsers. The most common format is .ico, though modern browsers also support PNG, SVG, and other image formats.

Why would you need to download a favicon?

There are many legitimate reasons to download a website's favicon:

  • Design inspiration: Studying how successful brands create memorable small-scale icons
  • Documentation: Including website icons in reports, presentations, or tutorials
  • Development: Using favicons as placeholders during website development
  • Bookmarking applications: Building custom bookmark managers or dashboards
  • Research: Analyzing visual branding strategies across different websites

Tool description

This favicon downloader tool allows you to quickly retrieve and download the favicon from any website. Simply enter a domain name, and the tool automatically fetches the favicon.ico file from the website's root directory. You can preview the icon, copy the direct URL, or download it with a single click.

Examples

Input Output
google.com Google's favicon (multicolored "G" icon)
https://github.com GitHub's Octocat favicon
www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Wikipedia's "W" globe favicon

The tool automatically strips protocols, paths, and trailing slashes to extract the base domain.

Features

  • Automatic URL normalization: Handles full URLs, paths, and protocols—just paste any website link
  • Live preview: See the favicon before downloading with pixel-perfect rendering
  • One-click download: Instantly download the favicon to your device
  • Direct URL access: Copy the favicon URL for embedding or external use
  • No registration required: Completely free and works instantly

Use cases

  1. Web developers creating link previews or building bookmark applications that display website icons
  2. Designers collecting favicon references for creating their own website icons
  3. Content creators adding website icons to tutorials, documentation, or comparison articles
  4. Researchers analyzing brand identity and visual consistency across web properties
  5. IT professionals documenting internal tools and external services in wikis or knowledge bases