All free tools Checked from VPSLake

Favicon Checker

See every icon a site offers to browsers, phones and search engines. Each file is downloaded and measured, so you learn its real format and size, not just what the HTML claims.

SITE ICONS

Check a website's favicons

Live test
A domain is enough. The home page is read for icon tags, the linked web manifest is opened, and /favicon.ico is always tested.

The check runs on the VPSLake server. Icons are downloaded into memory, measured and sent back to your browser as previews; nothing is saved. Private and internal network addresses are refused.

HOW TO USE IT

Audit your icons in four steps

Handy after a redesign, a theme change or moving a site to a new server, when icon files are easy to leave behind.

  1. 1

    Enter the domain

    Type the site address, such as example.com. You can also enter a specific page if it declares different icons.

  2. 2

    Run the check

    Select Check Favicons. The server collects rel="icon", apple-touch-icon, mask-icon and manifest icons, then downloads each one.

  3. 3

    Compare declared and real sizes

    The table shows each icon's preview, the size the HTML declares and the size the file really is. Mismatches and files that are not images are flagged.

  4. 4

    Fill the gaps

    Follow the findings: add a 48 px or larger icon for search results, a 180×180 apple-touch-icon, a 192 and 512 px manifest icon, or a real /favicon.ico.

A sensible icon set today

  • /favicon.ico holding 16, 32 and 48 px images
  • An SVG or 32×32 PNG declared with rel="icon"
  • A 180×180 PNG apple-touch-icon
  • 192×192 and 512×512 PNGs in a web app manifest

That covers browser tabs, bookmarks, Google results, iOS and Android home screens without a long list of legacy sizes.

Favicons in Google Search

Google shows a site icon next to results on mobile and desktop. It needs an icon declared in the home page, square, at least 48×48 px or a multiple of 48, or an SVG, and both the page and the icon file must be crawlable.

Changes can take days or weeks to appear because the icon is recrawled on Google's own schedule.

Serving icons from your own server

A 404 on /favicon.ico fills access logs with errors, because browsers and bots request it whether or not it is declared. Drop a real file in the document root, or on Nginx add location = /favicon.ico { log_not_found off; } if you deliberately serve none.

Make sure SVG files are sent as image/svg+xml and ICO files as image/x-icon, and cache them for a long time.

Common favicon mistakes

An icon URL that returns an HTML error page with 200 OK, a sizes attribute copied from a template that no longer matches the file, a manifest pointing to icons that were deleted, and a single 16 px icon stretched up for high-density screens.

The checker opens every file, so all of these show up in one pass.

What the checker reads

Icons are taken from the HTML the server sends and from the linked manifest; icons inserted later by JavaScript are not seen. Up to a dozen icons from the page plus a few from the manifest are tested, each file up to 200 KB. Browsers cache icons aggressively, so after you replace a file it may take a hard refresh before your own browser shows the change.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

Favicon Checker FAQ

It is worth keeping. Feed readers, some email clients, older browsers and many crawlers request /favicon.ico directly without reading your HTML. A small multi-size ICO file costs a few kilobytes and stops a steady stream of 404s in your logs.
The usual reasons are an icon smaller than 48×48 px, an icon that is not square, an icon blocked by robots.txt, an icon declared only on inner pages instead of the home page, or simply that Google has not recrawled it yet. Fix what the checker reports, then request indexing of the home page in Search Console.
The sizes attribute in the HTML or manifest says one thing and the image file is another. Browsers pick icons by the declared size, so a mismatch can make them choose a blurry file. Either update the attribute or export the icon at the size it claims.
Modern desktop and Android browsers accept SVG icons and Google Search does too. Safari on iOS still uses the apple-touch-icon PNG for home-screen shortcuts, so pair the SVG with a 180×180 PNG and a fallback ICO.
The address answered with 200 OK but the content was not a recognisable image. Most often a CMS or framework catches the missing file and returns its normal HTML page. Upload the real icon or correct the path in your template.
No. Icons are fetched into memory, measured, and returned to your browser as small inline previews in the same response. Nothing about the check is written to disk apart from an anonymous rate-limit counter that expires after a few minutes.