ICO to BMP Converter

What happens when you convert ICO to BMP

• The image is decoded and written as a 24-bit uncompressed bitmap.

How to convert ICO to BMP online

1. Press "Choose ICO files" and select one or more files, or drag them onto the box. You can add files of any size your device can hold in memory.
2. Adjust the settings if you need to. The output is lossless, so there is no quality setting to worry about.
3. Press "Convert to BMP". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each BMP with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert ICO to BMP?

ICO files usually come from website favicons and Windows program icons. People convert them to BMP because BMP is read by almost every Windows program, embedded display and old piece of software.

In short, ICO is good at what it was made for, and BMP is the more practical choice when the file has to open, upload or print somewhere else. ICO shown by browsers as a favicon; opening one directly depends on the viewer, while BMP opens in browsers and every Windows image tool.

How to convert ICO to BMP on Windows, Mac, iPhone and Android

On Windows

Open this page in Chrome, Edge or Firefox, drag your ICO files in from File Explorer, and press Convert. Each BMP is saved to your Downloads folder. Paint can also re-save an image as BMP with Save as, provided Windows can open the ICO in the first place.

On a Mac

Safari, Chrome and Firefox all work. Drag the ICO files from Finder onto the drop zone and the BMP files land in Downloads.

On iPhone and iPad

Open the page in Safari and tap Choose ICO files. You can pick from Photos or from the Files app. The converted BMP appears in Files, in the Downloads folder; to put it in your photo library, open it there, tap Share and choose Save Image.

On Android

Open the page in Chrome, tap Choose ICO files and pick them from Files or your gallery. The BMP is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for ICO to BMP

A 24-bit BMP stores every pixel uncompressed, three bytes each, so size is simply width times height times three: a 12 megapixel photo becomes about 36 MB. Use the Maximum width setting if the program that needs the BMP does not need full resolution.

ICO vs BMP: the differences

About ICO and BMP files

What is an ICO file?

An ICO file is a small container that can hold several sizes of the same icon, and since Windows Vista each size may be stored as an embedded PNG. The largest size an ICO can hold is 256 by 256 pixels.

What is a BMP file?

BMP usually stores pixels with no compression at all, so a 12 megapixel photo is about 36 MB. That size is the price of being readable by almost any program ever written for Windows.

ICO to BMP not working? Common problems

• Colours look slightly different. Browsers convert images to the standard sRGB colour space when they decode them, so wide-gamut and CMYK images can shift a little.
• A phone photo comes out upright even though it looked sideways elsewhere. That is correct: the rotation stored in the photo is applied during conversion, so the BMP is always the right way up.
• The file is bigger than expected. It depends on the settings. At the defaults, the BMP usually comes out close in size to the ICO; lower the quality for a smaller file.

Convert ICO to BMP from the command line

If you work in a terminal, ImageMagick converts ICO to BMP in one line:

magick input.ico output.bmp

To convert every ICO in a folder at once, use magick mogrify -format bmp *.ico. The converter on this page does the same job without installing anything.