ICO to GIF Converter

What happens when you convert ICO to GIF

• The image is decoded and written as a GIF with an optimised 256-colour palette.
• GIF transparency is all or nothing, so soft or semi-transparent edges become hard edges.
• GIF allows 256 colours, so photos pick up some banding. Graphics with flat colours convert cleanly.

How to convert ICO to GIF 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 GIF". Images convert in a second or two each.
4. Save each GIF with its download button. Close the tab and every trace of the files is gone from memory.

Why convert ICO to GIF?

ICO files usually come from website favicons and Windows program icons. People convert them to GIF because a GIF loops silently in any chat app, email or forum post without a play button.

In short, ICO is good at what it was made for, and GIF 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 GIF opens and animates in every browser.

How to convert ICO to GIF 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 GIF is saved to your Downloads folder. Paint can also re-save an image as GIF 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 GIF 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 GIF 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 GIF is saved to the Download folder, where any file manager can find it.

Best settings for ICO to GIF

Width and frame rate decide the size of a GIF far more than anything else. 480 pixels at 12 frames per second is a good balance for reaction clips; 320 pixels suits chat apps with small previews; 640 pixels at 15 frames per second looks smooth but grows quickly.

Every extra second adds frames, so trim the source to the moment you need before converting. A 3 second clip at the default settings is usually well under 2 MB.

ICO vs GIF: the differences

About ICO and GIF 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 GIF file?

GIF stores each frame with a palette of at most 256 colours, so photos turn grainy and animations get large fast. Transparency is on or off per pixel, with no soft edges.

ICO to GIF 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 GIF is always the right way up.
• The file is bigger than expected. It depends on the settings. At the defaults, the GIF usually comes out close in size to the ICO; lower the quality for a smaller file.

Convert ICO to GIF from the command line

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

magick input.ico output.gif

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