1Upload the ICO icons you want to mark, already at their final size — watermarking comes after resizing, not before it.
2Upload a transparent PNG logo or type your text, then choose the font, the colour and the opacity.
3Set the position, or switch to a tiled repeat when a single corner mark would be too easy to crop away.
4Download the watermarked ICO file; nothing else is added to it.
Watermark ICO FAQ
How does Watermark ICO place the mark?
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Concretely, watermarking an icon is rarely useful — there are too few pixels for a mark to be legible without destroying the icon, so treat this as a stamp on the largest entry rather than protection. You control the position, the size and the opacity, and the same settings are applied consistently across everything you upload.
Can I use my own logo, or only text?
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Either. Upload a transparent PNG logo, or type text and choose the font, colour and opacity. A tiled repeat is available when one corner mark is too easy to crop away.
Does the file format affect how the watermark comes out?
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It does. ICO is a container that holds several square bitmaps at once (16, 32, 48, 64, 128 and 256 px) so Windows and browsers can pick the size they need. That governs how cleanly a semi-transparent mark can be blended into the underlying content.
Anything specific to ICO worth knowing?
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Yes — an ICO is a stack of square bitmaps, not one image, so operations apply to the stack and Windows still picks whichever size it wants. It affects when in your workflow the mark should be applied.
Does a watermark actually protect my work?
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It deters casual reuse and it credits you; it is not security. A corner mark can be cropped and a faint one can be painted out. If protection matters, a large semi-transparent mark across the subject is far harder to remove than a discreet one in a corner.
Should I watermark before or after resizing?
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After. Watermark the final deliverable at its final size, so the mark stays legible and proportionate. Watermarking a master you will process again means the mark gets resampled and compressed along with everything else.
What can I upload to Watermark ICO?
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ICO files containing one or several sizes, plus ordinary PNG or JPG artwork if you are building an icon rather than editing one. Windows .ico and browser favicon files are the same format.
Is there a file size limit on Watermark ICO?
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Yes: free accounts process images up to 25 MB each, which no icon file will ever approach — a full 16-to-256-pixel stack is typically well under 200 KB. Icons are the one part of the image family where the cap is genuinely irrelevant.
Will Watermark ICO lower the quality of my ICO icons?
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The sizes stored inside an ICO are lossless bitmaps, so the pixels themselves do not degrade. What actually decides how good an icon looks is whether the size the operating system asks for exists in the stack — a 256 px entry downscaled on the fly by Windows always looks worse than a real 32 px entry.
Can I run Watermark ICO on several ICO icons at once?
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Yes. Icon files are tiny, so a batch of them completes almost instantly; the round trip is dominated by the upload, not the processing.
Which sizes should the icon contain?
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16, 32 and 48 pixels cover Windows Explorer and browser tabs; 256 covers large-icon view and modern shortcuts. Keeping all of them in one file costs almost nothing and stops the operating system from having to guess.
Does Watermark ICO cost anything?
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No. Watermark ICO is free with no account, and the output carries no watermark — which matters more here than anywhere else, since an icon is a handful of pixels with nowhere to hide one.
