What is a favicon?
The 16-pixel identity every site already has, and the only thing Square Town asks you for.
A favicon ("favourite icon") is the small square image a website provides so browsers can show it in tabs, bookmarks, history and home screens. Browsers look for /favicon.ico at the site root by default, or for one or more <link rel="icon"> tags in the page's <head>. On Square Town (square.pov.town) the favicon is the whole product: you give a URL, Square Town fetches the icon, and that icon becomes your 1×1 square on the wall.
TL;DR: ship a 32×32 PNG (or an SVG) and declare it with
<link rel="icon">. If your site has none, Square Town shows a clown instead.
What it is technically
- Default location:
https://yourdomain/favicon.ico— an ICO file, which can bundle several sizes in one file. - Declared icons:
<link rel="icon" href="/icon.png" type="image/png" sizes="32x32">; you may list several sizes. - Common sizes: 16×16 and 32×32 for tabs and bookmarks, 180×180 for
apple-touch-icon(iOS home screen), 192×192 (and 512×512) for Android and PWA manifests. - SVG:
<link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml" href="/icon.svg">scales to any size and is supported by modern browsers; keep an ICO or PNG fallback.
Design rules for something that must read at 16 pixels are their own topic: Favicon design tips: an icon that reads at 16 pixels. Adding one step by step: How to add a favicon to your site in 2026 (and stop being a clown).
How Square Town fetches it
Square Town does not crawl your site itself. It asks Google's favicon service — https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=yourdomain&sz=… — which already resolves /favicon.ico, <link rel="icon"> and the rest, and caches the result. The wall loads icons through Square Town's own proxy at /favicon/:domain (sizes 16–256), which adds the CORS header WebGL textures need and caches at the edge for a day. Right after purchase Square Town checks the same service: a 404 means no favicon, and the square joins the Hall of Clowns until you add one and press "I fixed my favicon". The icon's dominant colour is also sampled in the browser to tint your click tower in 3D.
Why it matters
A favicon is designed to be legible at 16×16, which is why a favicon wall can sell 1×1 cells: your existing icon reads where a 10×10 pixel ad never did. It also removes design work — no upload, no logo file, one square per domain. Elsewhere in the landscape, favicons appear as the unit only in crawled or curated projects (Nmap's Icons of the Web, StartupBar, favicon.im); logo walls make you upload instead. Argument in full: Why 1×1 favicon squares beat 10×10 pixel ads.
Example
Your site serves /favicon.ico with 16×16 and 32×32 layers and declares a 180×180 apple-touch-icon. You paste the URL into Square Town, Google's service returns the icon, and your square shows it within seconds — in colour, in 2D and on top of a tower in 3D.
FAQ
What size favicon does Square Town use?
Whatever your site serves; Square Town requests it from Google's favicon service at 16–256 px depending on zoom. A crisp 32×32 PNG or an SVG works best.
My site has a favicon but Square Town shows a clown — why?
Google's favicon service hadn't picked it up yet, or it's declared in a way it can't find. Check that /favicon.ico or a <link rel="icon"> resolves publicly, then press "I fixed my favicon".
Can I upload a different image to Square Town?
No. Square Town only shows the favicon your domain actually serves.
Do I need an ICO file in 2026?
Not strictly — a PNG or SVG declared with <link rel="icon"> is fine — but a /favicon.ico fallback is still the safest way to be found by every crawler and service.
Put your favicon on the wall
1 square = $1, one-time, no account. Paste a URL, pick a cell, done. Open the wall →