Convert ICO to PNG
An .ico is not one image. It is a small archive holding the same artwork at 16, 32 and 48 pixels, sometimes more, and the interesting question is not how to decode it but which one you get. Most converters hand you whichever frame came first. This takes the largest.
Use this without the search next time. Prathom Workbench puts Prathom's tools in your toolbar.
Add to Chrome — freeDrop your ICO file here, or click to browse
Up to 50 MB. Deleted automatically after 30 minutes.
What it does
- Reads every frame and returns the highest-resolution one
- Transparency is preserved exactly, including partial alpha
- Works on favicons, extracted program icons and cursor files
- No watermark and no sign-up
How to use ICO to PNG
- 1
Add the ICO
A favicon downloaded from a site, an icon pulled out of an old program, or the .ico a designer sent when you wanted a normal image file.
- 2
Convert
Every frame in the container is measured and the one with the most pixels is decoded. Icons are tiny, so this finishes almost immediately.
- 3
Check the size you got back
The result is only as sharp as the best frame inside the file. If the PNG comes back 32x32, the icon never contained anything bigger, and no converter can invent the missing detail.
How it works
The file's frame table is read first, every frame's dimensions are measured, and only then is one decoded and written out as a PNG.
That ordering is the whole trick. An .ico is a container with a directory at the front listing what is inside, and the entries are stored in whatever order the tool that built the file happened to emit them — commonly smallest first, but not reliably. Picking by position gives you a 16x16 image about as often as not.
Why one file holds several images
Icons are the one place in computing where the same artwork is needed at wildly different sizes on the same screen at the same moment. A browser tab wants 16 pixels. A taskbar button wants 32. A desktop shortcut wants 48, and a large-icon folder view wants 256.
Scaling one master image down to all of those produces mush at the small end, because a 16-pixel icon is not a small drawing — it is a different drawing, with details removed and edges snapped to whole pixels so they stay crisp. So the format lets a designer supply each size deliberately, and the operating system picks whichever fits the slot it is filling.
That design is why "convert this icon to an image" is ambiguous in a way that converting a JPEG never is.
What the largest frame does and does not give you
It gives you the most detail actually present. If a designer drew a careful 256-pixel version, you get it.
It does not give you a usable logo. Icons are drawn to be legible at small sizes, which usually means thicker strokes, fewer elements and higher contrast than the full artwork. Blown up on a slide, an icon looks like an icon.
It does not recover a vector. The file holds pixels at fixed sizes. If you need something that scales, you need the source the icon was made from.
Cursor files
A .cur is the same container with a hotspot recorded in two fields the icon format leaves unused, so the frames read identically and convert the same way. The hotspot itself — the pixel that counts as the pointer tip — has nowhere to go in a PNG and is dropped. That only matters if you intended to rebuild the cursor later, in which case keep the original.
Going the other direction
If what you actually want is a favicon, converting an icon to PNG and back loses the point of the format. Build the .ico from the largest artwork you have so each frame is generated from full detail rather than from an already-reduced image.
Examples
A three-size favicon
The 48 is returned because it is the largest. Handing back the 16 would be defensible only if you knew the file was destined for a browser tab, and you can always scale a good image down — the reverse produces the soft, haloed look of an upscaled icon.
An icon that only ever had one size
Nothing was chosen here, because there was nothing to choose between. This is the common disappointment: someone wants a large logo out of an icon file and the file simply never held one. The original artwork is what you need, not a conversion.
Frequently asked questions
Why is the PNG so small?
Because icons are small. The format was designed for interface elements at sizes measured in tens of pixels, and 48x48 is a common maximum in older files. Windows added 256x256 support in Vista, so a modern icon may hold one, but plenty of .ico files in circulation predate that and top out far lower.
Which frame do I actually get?
The one with the largest pixel area, measured across every frame in the container rather than assumed from the order they are stored in. Frames are not written in size order, so taking the first or last one is a coin-flip — a surprising number of converters do exactly that, which is why the same file gives different results on different sites.
Does transparency survive?
Yes, including partial transparency. Modern icon files store their frames as PNG internally, so the alpha channel comes across untouched. Older ones use a separate one-bit mask, which converts to fully transparent or fully opaque pixels — that is the file being faithful to what it contains, not the conversion losing anything.
Can I get all the sizes instead of one?
Not from this page, which returns a single image. If you need every frame, the practical route is to convert once for the largest and resize down to the sizes you want, which gives you consistent artwork across the set. Icon files sometimes contain frames drawn separately, and those can differ from each other in more than resolution.
Further reading
- A Three-Size Favicon Was 15 KB and the Same Images Were 1.3 KBA favicon is the smallest image on a website and one of the larger files in its root directory, which is a strange thing to be true. The reason is that .ico is not a compressed format at all, and every extra size you add costs its full uncompressed weight.
- Cutting a Graphic to Sixteen Colors Saved Fourteen Per CentReducing the palette is standard advice for shrinking a PNG, and on a graphic that is already flat color it buys far less than the drastic-sounding change suggests. The reason is that PNG was already exploiting the same redundancy, and it had got there first.
- Which Favicon Sizes You Actually NeedMost favicon guides list a dozen sizes and explain none of them. Only a few are ever actually drawn, the rest are cargo from an older web, and knowing which is which turns an afternoon of exporting into about five minutes.