ICO to PNG converter
Convert ICO images to PNG in your browser.
Processed in your browser. This file is converted on your device and is never uploaded.
Converter
.ico, .cur up to 50 MB. You can also drag a file here.
No file selected.
About this tool
ICO is the Windows icon format, and still what browsers request as /favicon.ico. PNG stores every pixel exactly and keeps transparency, which makes it the safe choice for graphics, screenshots, and anything with sharp edges or text.
This tool converts ICO to PNG entirely in your browser. The image is decoded, drawn, and re-encoded on your device, so nothing is uploaded and the size of the file costs you no waiting.
Supported formats and limits
- Input
- .ico, .cur
- Output
- .png (image/png)
- Output name
- The original name with the new extension, for example photo.ico becomes photo.png.
- File size limit
- 50 MB
- Processing
- In your browser. The file is not uploaded.
ICO against PNG
| Feature | ICO | PNG |
|---|---|---|
| Compression | Lossless | Lossless |
| Colour | 8 bits per channel | 8 bits per channel |
| Transparency | Full alpha channel | Full alpha channel |
| Animation | No | No |
| Keeps EXIF | No | Yes |
| Browser support | Every browser since 1999 | Every browser since 1997 |
| Size of a photograph | Not a format for photographs | 3 to 5 times a JPG |
| Published | 1985 | 1996 |
How to use it
- Choose a .ico / .cur file, or drag one onto the page.
- Optionally set a width or height to resize at the same time.
- Select Convert, then download the PNG file.
Limitations
- The largest image inside the icon is used.
- PNG is lossless, so a photograph saved as PNG is typically several times larger than the same photograph as JPEG or WebP.
- Metadata is not preserved. EXIF fields, including camera settings and GPS location, are dropped, which is a privacy benefit but worth knowing if you rely on them.
- Colour profiles are not preserved, so an image in a wide-gamut profile may shift slightly.
- The camera's EXIF orientation is applied, so a photo taken sideways comes out upright rather than rotated.
Common problems
The image came out very small, or looks pixelated
An ICO holds icon-sized images, commonly 16, 32 and 48 pixels across. The largest one inside your file is what this reads, and that is all the detail there is.
Nothing can add detail that was never stored. If you need a large image, go back to whatever the icon was made from rather than enlarging the PNG.
Other ways to do this
The program already on your computer
Preview on macOS, Photos on Windows, GIMP, Photoshop will open a ICO and save it as PNG, and if you have one of them installed and only one file to convert, that is a perfectly good answer. It stays on your machine the same way this does. Where it stops being convenient is a folder of forty files, or a machine you do not own.
ImageMagick, from a terminal
One command converts a directory: magick mogrify -format PNG *.ICO. If you already have it installed this is the fastest way to do a hundred files, and it scripts. It is also a dependency to install and a syntax to learn, which is a poor trade for converting one image once.
An online converter that uploads
Most sites offering this send your file to a server, convert it there, and give you a link back. They can do formats a browser cannot, which is a real advantage. The cost is that your file was on somebody else's machine, governed by a retention policy you did not read. That is the whole difference here: this page converts ICO to PNG using code your browser already downloaded, so there is no server holding it afterwards.
Frequently asked questions
- Is my image uploaded?
- No. The conversion runs entirely in your browser. The image never leaves your device and no request carrying it is made.
- Does converting to PNG lose any quality?
- The conversion itself does not. PNG is lossless, so every pixel it is handed is written exactly as it arrived and nothing is discarded on the way. What it cannot do is recover detail your ICO had already lost before it got here: a lossless format preserves what it is given, it does not restore what is gone.
- Which size comes out of the ICO?
- The largest one inside it. An ICO is a container holding several icon-sized images — commonly 16, 32 and 48 pixels across — and this reads the biggest available so the result has as much detail as the file actually contains. Nothing can add more, because nothing more was ever stored.
- Can I resize while converting?
- Yes. Set a width, a height, or both. With proportions kept, one dimension is derived from the other, and giving both fits the image inside that box rather than distorting it.
- Do I need to install anything or create an account to use ICO to PNG converter?
- No, to all of it. ICO to PNG converter runs inside the browser you already have, with no sign-up, no download, no watermark on the result, and no cap on how many files you convert. There is nothing to uninstall afterwards either, because nothing was installed.
- Does ICO to PNG converter work offline?
- Once the page has loaded, yes. The conversion runs on your device, so it needs no connection to do the work. The first visit fetches the page and the code that does the converting; after that a lost connection stops nothing, and a converted file appears exactly as it would online.
- How large a file can ICO to PNG converter handle?
- The limit is 50 MB. It is a deliberate one rather than a technical ceiling: the real constraint is memory, and a file that decodes to more than the device can hold fails in a way that is hard to explain. Phones run out well before laptops do, which is why the limit is set where it is.
- Can I convert several files at once with ICO to PNG converter?
- Not here: this tool takes one file at a time, because what it does depends on choices you make about that particular file. Convert them one after another, or look at the batch converters in the same category, which are built for a folder at a time.