faviconthing Get in touch

One letter · one colour · every size

A favicon that works at sixteen pixels.

Ask a chatbot and you get an SVG that falls apart in the tab. Ask a generator site and you get a zip of blurry PNGs and an ad. faviconthing makes a clean letter mark in every size a browser asks for, in one command.

V D N F H

Act I

The usual way.

You need a favicon for a new site. It's a sixteen-pixel square, so how hard can it be?

01 · Ask a chatbot

It writes you an SVG.

A gradient, a server stack, and the name in six-pixel type. It looks fine in the chat, at the size nobody will ever see it.

assistant
I need a favicon for my site, vpsthing. Can you make one?
Absolutely! Here's a modern, minimalist SVG favicon for vpsthing that captures the essence of cloud infrastructure:
<svg viewBox="0 0 64 64">
<linearGradient id="g">…</linearGradient>
<rect width="64" height="64" rx="12" fill="url(#g)"/>
<rect x="14" y="14" width="36" height="8" rx="2"/>
<text y="58" font-size="6">VPS</text>
</svg>
The gradient conveys innovation and the stack represents reliability. Save it as favicon.svg and you're all set!
64 px 16 px, in the tab

02 · Ask again

"You're absolutely right!"

It agrees it's blurry, simplifies it, and keeps the gradient. Then it mentions the other files browsers want, and says to find a converter for them.

assistant
It's just a blurry purple square in the tab.
You're absolutely right! At 16×16 fine details get lost. Here's a simplified version with a bolder shape:
64 px 16 px, in the tab
For full browser support you'll also want a favicon.ico and an apple-touch-icon.png at 180×180. You can create those with an online converter.
favicon.ico, still to make
apple-touch-icon.png, still to make

03 · Try a generator site

A zip, a PNG, and an ad.

Upload a logo, press generate, close a newsletter popup. You get a zip of every size, each one a blurry downscale of the same picture.

free-favicon-generator.example
Favicon Generator Free · no signup*
Image vpsthing-logo.png
Generate favicons
Advertisement Build a website in 5 minutes! No code needed.
Your favicons are ready.
64 px 16 px, in the tab
Download ZIP (3.2 MB)

04 · In the tab

Where it actually lives.

Sixteen pixels, next to every other tab you have open. Three attempts in, none of them is a letter you can read at a glance.

about:tabs
vpsthing · attempt 1
vpsthing · attempt 2
vpsthing · attempt 3

That was one sixteen-pixel square.

attempts
3
files still missing
2
ads closed
1
readable in the tab
0

Here's the same favicon, with faviconthing.

Act II

The faviconthing way.

A letter, a colour, and a shape. It writes every file a browser asks for, and each one is sharp at its own size.

01 · One command

Give it a letter and a colour.

It always writes a capital, sized and centred to read at sixteen pixels, on the colour you pick. Six files, and the markup that points at them.

~/site
$ faviconthing V --bg "#f7b32b" --ink black
→ favicon.svg
→ favicon.ico 16 · 32 · 48
→ apple-touch-icon.png 180
→ icon-192.png · icon-512.png
→ site.webmanifest
✓ 6 files · the markup is in head.html
64 px 32 16, in the tab

02 · Pick the shape

Circle, square, or rounded.

White or black on whatever vibrant colour you choose. Those are the only decisions a sixteen-pixel mark needs.

~/site
$ faviconthing V --bg "#f7b32b" --shape circle
$ faviconthing V --bg "#f7b32b" --shape square
$ faviconthing V --bg "#5b8def" --ink white
circle square white ink

03 · The whole set

One look for every thing.

Every site in this set gets its mark the same way: its first letter, on its own colour. They match each other without anyone designing nineteen icons.

~/things
$ for t in things/*; do faviconthing $t; done
✓ 19 things · 114 files
H hostingthing I iacthing V vpsthing N nixthing D dnsthing D domainsthing G gatething N notifything B billingthing D dxthing R repothing F faviconthing L llmthing A applything T twentything F fetchthing A argthing S siteinabottle S softwareinabottle

04 · The markup

And the lines for your head.

It writes what points at the files too, so nothing has to be looked up or copied from a blog post.

~/site
$ cat head.html
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="32x32">
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">
<link rel="manifest" href="/site.webmanifest">
$

Act III

What it writes, and why it holds up.

A favicon is a handful of files at fixed sizes. faviconthing writes all of them from one description, the same way every time.

  1. 1

    A mark made for the size

    One capital letter, bold, centred and large enough to read at sixteen pixels. No gradients, no detail that turns to mush in a tab.

  2. 2

    Every file a browser asks for

    favicon.svg, a multi-size favicon.ico, the Apple touch icon, the two app icons and the manifest. Each one is drawn at its own size, not scaled down from another.

  3. 3

    The same every time

    Run it twice and the second run changes nothing. The letter and the colour are the whole description, so it lives in a script next to the site.

The same favicon, three ways
Measure Chatbot Generator site faviconthing
Readable at 16 px no blurry yes
Every size one SVG a zip six files and the markup
The same next time never if you kept the logo always
Ads and popups none several none

Want the icons for your sites?

Tell me the letters and the colours. The tool lives with the rest of the things, and it's close to ready.

Get in touch