Apple Touch Icon Generator Online Free

When users bookmark your website or Progressive Web App to their iPhone or iPad home screen using Safari’s “Add to Home Screen” feature, iOS looks specifically for an Apple Touch Icon. If your website does not provide one, iOS generates an unappealing miniature screenshot of the webpage instead of displaying your professional brand logo.

The preset on this page configures the Favicon Generator to produce an exact 180×180 pixel apple-touch-icon.png. It optimizes your artwork for high-density Apple Super Retina screens and provides a live mobile home screen preview so you can verify how your bookmark appears before deploying.

Apple Touch Icon specifications and best practices

Apple introduced the Touch Icon specification to ensure web applications and bookmarked links feel like native iOS applications on user home screens. To ensure your icon looks exceptional across all Apple devices:

1. Standard 180×180 pixel resolution: Modern iPhones with 3× display scaling require 180×180 pixels. This high-density master icon scales down smoothly for older 2× devices (120×120) and iPads (152×152).
2. Keep the corners square in your file: A common mistake is manually rounding the corners of the source file. When iOS renders an icon, it automatically clips the image with a proprietary continuous-curve squircle mask and applies a subtle drop shadow. If you pre-round the corners, unsightly black or gray artifacts will appear in the corners of the icon.
3. Use a solid background or comfortable margins: While Safari supports transparency on Touch Icons, transparent areas often display against a default black or gray backdrop on older iOS versions. Using a solid brand background color or setting a 5% to 10% inner margin produces the most consistent visual presentation.
4. Focus on a recognizable mark: Detailed wordmarks and intricate slogans become difficult to read on smartphone home screens. Focus on your most distinct visual element—a monogram, emblem, or simplified logo badge.

How to install the Apple Touch Icon on your website

After downloading your apple-touch-icon.png, upload it to the root public directory of your web host (for example, /public/apple-touch-icon.png). Then add the following tag inside the <head> section of your website:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" sizes="180x180" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">

iOS will automatically detect this tag when users add your site to their home screen. For maximum compatibility across Android devices and desktop browsers, you can also download the complete ZIP pack containing the multi-size favicon.ico and Android PWA icons generated alongside your Apple Touch Icon.

Safe, client-side processing

Brand identity assets, unannounced mobile app icons, and client graphics deserve strict confidentiality. Traditional online icon generators upload your files to external cloud servers where they may be stored, indexed, or cached on third-party infrastructure.

Glowpixel Labs processes your files completely in your web browser. All canvas resampling, aspect ratio calculations, and PNG encoding execute locally on your device. Not a single pixel is transmitted across the internet. Read our privacy policy for full details on our zero-data retention model.

Small details that decide how the icon looks on an iPhone

Safari fills any transparent pixels of an apple-touch-icon with black, so choose a solid background colour instead of leaving the corners empty. Do not round the corners yourself: iOS applies its own mask, and a pre-rounded square ends up with a visible dark rim. Leave a little padding around the logo so the mask never cuts into it, and avoid thin strokes, which blur at home-screen size. Phones cache these icons aggressively, so when you replace the file give it a new file name or add a version query string in the link tag, otherwise returning visitors keep seeing the old artwork.