Picture Batch ICO to PNG
ICO to PNG
An .ico file is not one image, it is a small directory of them — the same icon at 16, 32, 48 and often 256 pixels, so Windows can pick a size instead of scaling. This page opens that directory, converts the largest entry to PNG, and tells you what the other entries were.
Drop ICO images here
ICO files — or any of PNG, JPEG, WebP, AVIF, BMP, TIFF, GIF or camera raw (CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, DNG, RAF, ORF, RW2). Everything runs on this device.
Your images never leave this device. They are decoded and re-encoded by your own browser, and the security policy on every page blocks this site from sending them anywhere.
Lossless, keeps transparency, universally supported, larger than modern formats.
PNG is lossless — it stores every pixel exactly, so there is nothing to trade away.
Images keep their original dimensions.
Kept. PNG stores a full alpha channel, so cut-outs and soft edges come through exactly.
Exif is carried across where both formats can hold it. Nothing currently in the queue has any.
ICO metadata cannot be read by this tool, so there is nothing to carry across. Orientation is still applied to the pixels.
What happens to your image
File size depends mostly on the image itself.
| Property | Outcome |
|---|---|
| Transparency | Preserved: Kept. PNG stores a full alpha channel, so soft edges and cut-outs survive exactly. |
| Image quality | Preserved: Unchanged. Both formats are lossless, so every pixel comes through exactly. |
| Colour | Partly preserved: Converted to sRGB. Decoding an image colour-manages it into the browser's own space, so the output is sRGB and is left untagged, which every viewer reads as sRGB. A wide-gamut source is reported before conversion. |
| Exif metadata | Not preserved: ICO metadata is not read by this tool, so there is nothing to carry across. |
| Orientation | Preserved: Applied to the pixels, and the tag is reset to upright afterwards so nothing rotates the image a second time. |
| Multiple icon sizes | Not preserved: Only the largest image in the icon is converted. The others are discarded. |
Two completely different things live inside an icon file
Each entry is stored either as a whole PNG file embedded verbatim — which Windows Vista introduced so a 256×256 icon did not have to be a quarter of a megabyte — or as a DIB, which is the body of a BMP with a peculiarity: its declared height is doubled, because the colour bitmap is followed by a one-bit transparency mask that predates alpha channels.
Both appear in real files, frequently in the same file. This reader handles both, and where an entry uses the old mask instead of an alpha channel it applies the mask and says so in the result.
The transparency puzzle, resolved explicitly
A 32-bit icon entry has an alpha channel and a one-bit mask, and they can disagree. A surprising number of icon editors write a 32-bit entry whose alpha channel is entirely zero — meaning "completely invisible" if you take it at face value — alongside a mask that is actually correct.
Taking the alpha at face value produces a blank PNG, which is the single most common icon-conversion bug. So when a 32-bit entry's alpha channel carries no information at all, the mask is used instead, and the result records which one was used.
You get the largest size, not all of them
One PNG comes out, from the biggest entry, because that is nearly always what someone extracting an icon wants. The queue lists every size the file contained, so if the one you need is not the largest you at least know it is in there.
If something goes wrong
The PNG is smaller than expected — 32×32 rather than 256×256.
The icon simply does not contain a larger entry. Many favicons are 16 and 32 pixels only.
What to do: Nothing to fix. Enlarging a 32-pixel icon does not add detail; it just makes the blur bigger.
"Icon entry points past the end of the file."
The directory's offsets do not match the file. Usually a truncated download or a file assembled by a broken tool.
What to do: Re-download it. If the site serves the same broken file every time, the file on their server is corrupt.
The result is a cursor, not an icon.
.cur files use the same container with a different type field, and the two fields that hold colour depth hold the hotspot coordinates instead.
What to do: It converts fine — the image is the image. The hotspot is not carried into a PNG because PNG has nowhere to put it.
Questions
How do I get every size out of an icon, not just the largest?
This tool converts the largest entry only. The queue lists all the sizes the file contains, so you can see what is there, but extracting each one separately needs a dedicated icon editor.
Can I convert a favicon.ico from a website?
Yes. Save it from the site and add it here. Nothing is uploaded — the file is read by your own browser.