ICO and AVIF explained
ICO is a container that holds several versions of the same icon at different sizes, so the operating system or browser can pick the one that fits. It is capped at 256×256 pixels.
AVIF stores still images using the AV1 video codec's intra-frame compression. It generally achieves the smallest files of any widely supported format, and it handles wide colour gamut and HDR, which JPEG cannot.
- Where ICO files come from
- Website favicons and Windows application icons.
- Where AVIF is used
- Performance-focused websites and modern image pipelines.