What is a .ICO file?
ICO is the Windows icon format, storing one or more small images at several sizes for app icons and favicons.
- Did you know
- The ICO format dates back to Windows 1.0 in 1985.
- An ICO file can pack several images at different sizes and colour depths so Windows can pick the right one for each context.
- Lower colour-depth icons store transparency using a separate 1-bit “AND mask” alongside the colour data.
- Since Windows Vista, large 256-pixel icons can be stored as embedded PNG data to keep the file small.
- Analyser spots a .ICO file by its signature bytes
00 00 01 00.
- What Analyser shows you
- View EXIF, GPS, camera settings, histograms, dominant colours, OCR text, and AI-generation markers in JPG, PNG, HEIC, WebP, GIF, BMP, TIFF, AVIF and JPEG XL images. Detects computational-photo wrappers (Apple Live Photo, Google and Samsung Motion Photo, Ultra HDR gain maps), opens THM movie-thumbnail files, and extracts every embedded image from multi-image files - all sizes in an ICO, both halves of an MPO stereo pair, and every page of a multi-page TIFF.
- Open a .ICO file
- Drag a .ICO file onto the Analyser home page (or tap to pick one). It opens entirely in your browser - nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and it works offline once installed.