From a photo or a logo to an icon
Often the only version of a logo you have is a JPG: the one from an email signature, a business card file or a social media profile. And sometimes you want an icon made from a photo, like a picture of your pet on a Windows folder, a family photo on a desktop shortcut, or the face of a product on a small app. Windows and websites need an .ico file for that, and this tool makes one.
Small business owners use it to give their website a favicon without hiring a designer. Teachers and office workers use it to color-code important folders with recognizable pictures. Hobby developers use it to give a script or a small program an icon of its own.
What the icon file includes
The .ico you download contains the same picture at several sizes, from 16 up to 256 pixels. The system picks the right one for each place: a tiny version for browser tabs and file lists, larger ones for desktop shortcuts and big icon views.
Icons are square. If your JPG is a landscape or portrait photo, it's fitted inside the square and the space around it stays transparent. For an icon filled edge to edge, crop the photo to a 1:1 square first with “Crop image”, centered on the part that matters, such as a face or the symbol in a logo.
About white backgrounds
JPG has no transparency, so a logo saved as JPG usually sits on a white rectangle. In the icon, that white box stays, which can look odd on a dark browser tab or a dark Windows theme. If the background is plain white, run the image through “Remove white background” first: it becomes a PNG with a transparent background, and then “PNG to ICO” gives a cleaner icon. This works for logos and drawings on a plain background, not for photos of people.
Also remember that icons are tiny. At 16 pixels a detailed photo becomes a blur of colors, so close-ups and simple shapes work best.
Private and free
The icon is created in your browser. Your JPG is never uploaded or stored on a server, you don't need an account and there's no limit on how many icons you make. Several images can be converted at once and downloaded together in a ZIP.