App Icons

Overview

Nuxt SEO Utils automatically detects icon files in your project and generates the appropriate link tags in your HTML head. You do not need to manually include these icons - they are auto-generated based on files you place in your project.

This is based on Next.js Metadata File with an almost identical API, however runtime images are not supported.

Setup

Simply place your icon files in either:

• The root of your public/ directory (applies to all pages)
• Alongside your pages/ directory (for route-specific icons)

The module will automatically detect these files and generate the appropriate HTML tags. No configuration required.

Generating Icons with the CLI

If you have a logo or source image, you can generate all required icon variants automatically:

npx nuxt-seo-utils icons --source logo.svg

This creates favicon.ico, apple-touch-icon.png, and multiple icon-*.png sizes. See the CLI guide for details.

Naming Convention

favicon

• Name: favicon.{ico,png,svg}

Using an ico file for your favicon is a good practice as all browsers support it, you can pack multiple icon sizes into it without having to define a number of extra icon links.

The favicon.ico file should be placed in the public directory. It is supported by most browsers and displayed in the browser tab.

The module always emits an explicit link, including at the default / base URL. For bitmap icons, sizes describes the dimensions found in the file. SVG icons use sizes="any" because they scale without a fixed resolution.

Example: Place favicon.ico in public/favicon.ico and the module automatically generates:

<link
  rel="icon"
  type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon"
  href="/base/favicon.ico"
  sizes="16x16 32x32 48x48"
/>

icon

• Name: *icon.{ico,jpg,jpeg,png,svg}, *icon-*.{ico,jpg,jpeg,png,svg}

Icons give you greater control over the displayed icon. You can provide multiple icons and the browser will automatically select the best icon based on the device's pixel density and use it to display the app icon.

If you have multiple icons and need to sort them, it's recommended you prefix them with their order. For example: 1.icon.png, 2.icon.png, 3.icon.png.

Example: Place icon files in public/ and the module automatically generates:

<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/1.icon.png" sizes="32x32" />
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/2.icon.png" sizes="192x192" />
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/3.icon.png" sizes="360x360" />

Dark / light mode: Append -dark, -light, .dark or .light to provide both icon variants. For example, use favicon-dark.svg and favicon-light.svg.

Example: Place icon-dark.png and icon-light.png in public/ and the module automatically generates:

<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/icon-dark.png" sizes="32x32" media="(prefers-color-scheme: dark)" />
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="/icon-light.png" sizes="32x32" media="(prefers-color-scheme: light)" />

If the app uses @nuxtjs/color-mode, the module updates a complete pair when the app color mode changes. This works when Nuxt UI installs the color mode module. Without this module, the browser uses the prefers-color-scheme media query.

apple-touch-icon

• Name: *apple-icon*.{png,jpg,jpeg}, *apple-touch-icon*.{png,jpg,jpeg}, apple-touch.{png,jpg,jpeg}

Apple touch icons are used by iOS devices to display a website's icon on the home screen and in the browser tab. You can again provide multiple icons.

Example: Place apple-icon.png in public/ and the module automatically generates:

<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-icon.png" sizes="180x180" />

Defining Icon Tags Yourself

Static icon links in nuxt.config.ts take priority over inferred files of the same role. Regular icons and Apple touch icons are resolved independently, so defining one still allows the module to infer the other.

For a local file, the module fills missing type and sizes attributes. It also includes app.baseURL in the href and replaces invalid bitmap sizes, such as sizes="any" on an ICO file, with dimensions read from the file. A valid subset remains unchanged. Normalizations produce a development warning.

export default defineNuxtConfig({
  app: {
    head: {
      link: [
        { rel: 'icon', href: '/favicon.ico' },
      ],
    },
  },
})

Tags added with useHead() are evaluated at runtime, after build-time file inspection. The SEO Utils DevTools panel reports missing sizes and invalid sizes="any" values in the final rendered head. The panel needs nuxtseo-devtools-host as a dev dependency. A runtime tag with the same rel and href replaces the generated entry; a different href adds another candidate.

Set seo.metaDataFiles to false if you want runtime tags to be the only source of icon metadata.

Pages Directory

You can also place logos in your pages directory. This is useful if you want to have different logos for different pages.

The naming convention is the same as the public directory.

pages/
├── index.vue
├── admin/
│   ├── index.vue
│   └── icon.png

This will overwrite any logos in the public directory for all admin pages.

You can optionally also place your files within the _dir directory, which will work the same way.

pages/
├── index.vue
├── admin/
│   ├── _dir/
│   │   └── icon.png # Does the same thing!
│   └── index.vue