A favicon (short for “favorite icon”) is an icon associated with a website or webpage intended to be used when you bookmark the web page. Web browsers use them in the URL bar, on tabs, and elsewhere to help identify a website visually. Also, it is used as application icon of mobile device, plus, if you add a website link to your desktop, you can get an icon displayed (if the site offers that).
Create Your Favicon
For this tutorial, we will use our Child Theme Styles logo as our example.
- Prepare image file. It must be square, and at least 512 pixels wide and tall.
- Go to Administration Screen > Appearance > Customize >> Site Identify
- Click “Select Image” at Site Icon section, upload the image file you prepared in the above step from Upload Files tab screen, and click Select. You will probably get the option to crop the image or skip cropping.
- Click “Save & Publish“
- Now we can look at the browser tab for our new favicon (site icon)
More details about favicons
Normally, this icon should be an .ico format, but due to how WordPress provides this feature, it does not save your png, jpg, or gif file as an ico, but if you decide to override your theme with a child theme and want to take advantage of the .ico format, you can opt in for that.
For more detailed information regarding the WordPress Site Icon, you can check out the guidelines for Creating a Favicon.