Secure server conversion
ICO to WebP Converter
Extract the largest image from a Windows ICO file and save it as WebP, with transparency intact. This is the right conversion for putting old icon artwork onto a modern website — it produces the smallest file of the available options and loses nothing.
Drag and drop your ICO images here
Add several at once. Each file is processed and then deleted from our server.
Up to 20 MB per file Batch ready
Higher keeps more detail; lower makes a smaller file. Applies to images you add after changing it.
Conversion queue
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Your browser could not read this file, so it was converted on our server and deleted there straight away.
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Step by step
How to convert ICO to WEBP in 3 steps
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Add your .ico file
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Leave the quality high
The reason is below, and it is not the usual one.
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Download your WebP
Format comparison
ICO vs WEBP
ICO (Windows Icon)
Multi-size iconBundles several sizes of the same small image in one file, for Windows icons and website favicons.
- Several icon sizes in a single file
- Understood by every browser as a favicon
- Only for small images — each entry is at most 256 × 256 pixels
WebP
Lossy or losslessA web format from Google that can work like JPG or like PNG, usually producing a smaller file than either.
- Smaller files than JPG or PNG for most images
- Supported by every current browser
- Some older desktop software and upload forms still reject it
Twenty-five years apart
ICO dates from 1985 and stores its images as bitmaps or PNGs. WebP arrived in 2010 to make web
pages load faster. The gap between them is exactly why this conversion is useful: a great deal of
perfectly good logo artwork exists only inside old .ico files, and websites now want
something a browser can serve efficiently.
You get the largest image in the file
An ICO holds the same artwork at several sizes — commonly 16, 32, 48 and 256 pixels. This tool takes the largest, which is what you want when extracting artwork for reuse.
Converters differ here in a way that matters: many read the first entry rather than the biggest, and the first entry is often the 16×16. Being handed a 16-pixel image when the file contained a 256-pixel one is a silent, annoying failure.
Transparency survives properly
WebP has a full alpha channel, so transparent and semi-transparent areas come across exactly. That is the whole reason to prefer this over ICO to JPG, which has to flatten everything onto a solid colour.
Icons rely on partial transparency for smooth edges. Keeping it means the extracted artwork sits cleanly on any background rather than carrying a halo of whatever colour it was flattened against.
Use lossless mode, which is the opposite of the usual advice
WebP has two modes: lossy, which works like JPEG, and lossless, which works more like PNG. For photographs, lossy is almost always right — it is the reason WebP exists.
Icon artwork is the exact opposite case. It is small, with flat colours and hard edges, so:
- Lossless compresses it extremely well. Flat colour is the easy case, and the file often comes out smaller than a lossy version would.
- Lossy would add speckling around every edge, which is very visible at icon sizes because there are so few pixels to hide it in.
So keep the quality slider high. On this kind of content it costs nothing and prevents the only real way this conversion can go wrong.
Quality
Quality and file size
Keep quality at 90 or above. The usual reason to lower it — saving bandwidth on a large photograph — simply does not apply to an image a few dozen pixels across.
How small the result will be
Very. A 256-pixel icon as lossless WebP is typically a few kilobytes, and often smaller than the same artwork as PNG, since WebP's lossless mode is a genuinely better compressor for flat colour and hard edges.
For a site serving an icon on every page, that difference is worth having even though the absolute numbers are small.
Browser support is not a concern any more
Every current browser handles WebP — Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Edge — and has for years. The only real gaps are outside the browser: some desktop previews, older office software and various business systems still do not open it.
For a website, that does not matter. For sending a file to a colleague, PNG is the safer choice.
Do not enlarge it
The extracted image is whatever size the icon held — usually 256 pixels at most. Scaling that up produces a soft, blocky result, because an ICO contains no vector information and nothing can reconstruct detail that was never stored. For anything larger, find the original design file.
The situation this is for
A company has a logo. The best surviving copy is the icon from an application built years ago, because the design files are gone, the agency is gone, and the icon is what remains.
That is a real and common situation, and extracting to WebP gives you the artwork in the format a modern site wants — with the transparency intact, which matters because the logo will have to sit on backgrounds nobody has chosen yet.
Other uses
- Modernising a site's assets where icons were the original source.
- Building a documentation page showing application icons.
- Reusing icon artwork in a web app at small display sizes.
- Archiving old icon artwork in a compact, lossless, widely-readable format.
Expect a small image
The single most common surprise is that the result is 256 pixels or less. Icons are small by definition, an ICO is a final output format rather than a master asset, and no conversion changes that.
Use the extracted artwork as a reference to redraw from if you need it large. A vector redraw from a 256-pixel reference is quick work for a designer and gives you something that scales forever.
The three ways out of an ICO
- WebP — this page. Smallest, keeps transparency, ideal for the web.
- PNG — keeps transparency, opens absolutely everywhere. The safe default.
- JPG — loses transparency and adds edge artefacts. Only when something insists on it.
Going the other way
WebP to ICO builds a multi-size icon from a WebP, and the favicon generator produces the whole modern set a website needs.
What happens to your file
Browsers cannot read the ICO container, so this runs on our server. Your upload is deleted the moment conversion finishes, the result is deleted as you download it, and anything abandoned is swept automatically.
Privacy
What happens to your file
This tool runs on our server, so it works the same on every phone and computer. Your file is uploaded, and this is exactly what happens to it:
- Stored outside the public web root under a random name, never under your file's name.
- Processed, with the original upload deleted immediately — whether it succeeded or failed.
- The result sits behind a signed link that only you receive, which stops working after 20 minutes, and the file is deleted the moment you download it.
- Anything never collected is deleted automatically within 30 minutes.
- The image itself is never logged or kept. If a conversion fails, we record the formats involved and the error — not the file.
- Camera metadata, including any GPS coordinates recording where a photo was taken, is removed from the result. Only the rotation needed to show the image the right way up is kept.
Questions & answers
ICO to WebP: frequently asked questions
Which image comes out of the icon?
The largest one in the file, which is what you want when extracting artwork for reuse. Many converters read the first entry instead, and that is frequently the 16×16 — being handed a 16-pixel image when the file held a 256-pixel one is a silent and annoying failure.
Is transparency preserved?
Yes, fully. WebP has a proper alpha channel, so transparent and semi-transparent areas come across exactly. That matters because icons rely on partial transparency for smooth edges — keeping it means the artwork sits cleanly on any background rather than carrying a halo.
What quality setting should I use?
90 or above, which is the opposite of the usual WebP advice. Icon artwork is small with flat colours and hard edges, so lossless mode compresses it extremely well — often smaller than a lossy version — while lossy would add speckling around every edge, very visible when there are so few pixels to hide it in.
Will the WebP be smaller than a PNG?
Usually yes. WebP's lossless mode is a genuinely better compressor for flat colour and hard edges than PNG. A 256-pixel icon typically comes out at a few kilobytes.
Can everyone open a WebP?
Every current browser can, and has for years. The gaps are outside the browser — some desktop previews, older office software and various business systems. For a website that is irrelevant; for emailing a file to a colleague, PNG is the safer choice.
The image is too small for what I need.
Icons are small by definition, and an ICO holds no vector information to recover, so enlarging gives a soft blocky result. Use the extracted artwork as a reference to redraw from — a vector redraw from a 256-pixel reference is quick work and gives you something that scales forever.
Keep going
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