BrowserTools

ICO to PNG Converter

Extract Windows icons into PNG images

By Guga — BrowserTools maintainer, Tbilisi, Georgia Updated 2026-08-11
Free Private No uploads
What is ICO to PNG Converter?

An .ico file is a container holding several renditions of the same artwork at different pixel sizes. What a browser's image decoder hands back is one of them — the one it considers primary, which is normally the largest — and that becomes your PNG. That is genuinely useful when you need the artwork rather than the icon: a documentation page illustrating a Windows app, a design system documenting brand assets, a support article showing a toolbar button. It is not a way to pull every embedded size out, because the decoder exposes a single raster and this tool has no way to enumerate the directory entries. If you need 16px and 256px separately, run the dedicated icon packer, which resamples an image into every size you select.

Convert a Windows .ico icon file into a PNG, decoding the largest image stored in it. Great for recovering app icons for documentation or design work.

Private ICO to PNG Converter In Your Browser

ICO to PNG Converter is processed locally with client-side JavaScript. Your files never touch a server, and there is no queue to wait in.

Step-by-Step

How to use ICO to PNG Converter

1

Drop .ico files onto the Convert to PNG panel — the picker also lists the registered image/x-icon type so Windows files are selectable.

2

Let the browser decode the container; you receive one raster per icon, not one image per embedded size.

3

Check the thumbnail to confirm it is the rendition you expected.

4

Download the PNG, or collect up to 50 of them into a ZIP.

Key Capabilities
  • Accepts the registered image/x-icon MIME type as well as image/vnd.microsoft.icon and the .ico extension
  • Produces a full-colour 8-bit PNG that older software will open without complaint
  • Converts up to 50 icon files per run and downloads them as one ZIP
  • Displays the original and output byte sizes for every icon converted
Common Use Cases
  • A technical writer illustrating a Windows application's toolbar in a support article.
  • A brand designer cataloguing a client's existing icon assets before a rebrand.
  • A developer pulling a tray icon out of an executable's resources to include in a README.
Clear Answers

Frequently Asked Questions

Why only one image per icon when the file contains several sizes?
An icon file is a container, and this reads it the way a browser does: one raster, normally the largest rendition. Splitting out every embedded size would need a parser for the container's directory table, which this tool does not have.
What happens to the transparency in an icon?
It is preserved — Windows icons are usually 32-bit with an alpha channel, and the PNG output keeps it. The preview sits on a checkerboard so you can confirm.
I want a different size than the one I got. What now?
Start from a PNG you already like and run it through the ICO builder, where you tick 16px through 256px yourself.
Are the icons uploaded anywhere?
No. Decoding is handled by the browser from a local object URL, and no request appears in the Network panel.

Related Guides

View all guides →
imageFavicon Sizes: What Your Website Actually NeedsA favicon is one small square of artwork that a browser requests at particular sizes, so a site needs a few purpose-built renditions rather than a single export scaled into every slot. Which pixels each context asks for, why a multi-size .ico still earns its place, and how the pieces are declared is below; to build the whole set from one image, the favicon generator linked from this guide produces the files and the tags.