How to easily add a favicon to a Next.js app

Adding a favicon to a website enhances usability and branding. It helps identify the website in browser tabs and bookmarks, improving user recognition and trust.

Let’s learn how to quickly add a favicon image to a Next.js app

Add favicon automatically in Next.js 13 App Router

To add a favicon in Next.js 13 App Router, add a favicon.ico file to the app/ directory. Next.js will automatically detect favicon.ico and display it on the page.

Here we’ve added the favicon.ico to our VS Code Next.js project.

favicon.ico is the app directory in Visual Studio Code.

And this is all we need to do – here’s layout.tsx:

import { Metadata } from 'next';
import './globals.css';

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>{children}</body>
    </html>
  );
}

And we’ll instantly see the image next to the page title in the browser tab:

The favicon shows up next to the page title in the browser-tab

Apart from favicon and .ico, Next.js also auto-discovers the following file name and extension combinations in the app/ directory

icon with .ico, .jpg, .jpeg, .png, or.svg extension.
app-icon with .jpg, .jpeg, .png extension.

You can rename PNGs to .ico files and they will still work.

Add favicon automatically in Next.js Pages Router

To add a favicon automatically in the Next.js pages directory, place a favicon.ico file in your public/ directory, and your browser will automatically detect the file for the site icon.

favicon.ico is the public directory in Visual Studio Code.

If your image file isn’t a .ico, you’ll need to either rename it to favicon.ico, or manually specify the filename.

Set Next.js favicon statically in Next.js 13 App Router

To add a favicon to a Next.js 13 app, you can also export a Metadata object with an icons property in your layout.tsx file:

import { Metadata } from 'next';
import './globals.css';

export const metadata: Metadata = {
  icons: {
    icon: '/icon.png',
  },
};

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <body>{children}</body>
    </html>
  );
}

The image file should be in your public directory.

Set Next.js favicon with HTML in Pages Router

To add a site icon in the Next.js pages or app directory, use the HTML <link> tag in your _document.tsx or _document.js file, just like in vanilla HTML:

import { Html, Head, Main, NextScript } from 'next/document';

export default function Document() {
  return (
    <Html lang="en">
      <Head>
        <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.png" />
      </Head>
      <body>
        <Main />
        <NextScript />
      </body>
    </Html>
  );
}

The favicon should be in your public directory.

Add favicon with HTML in Next.js 13 App Router

You can also use the HTML <link> tag to add a favicon in a project using the Next.js app directory, in your layout.tsx file:

import './globals.css';

export default function RootLayout({
  children,
}: {
  children: React.ReactNode;
}) {
  return (
    <html lang="en">
      <head>
        <link rel="icon" href="/app-icon.jpg" />
      </head>
      <body>{children}</body>
    </html>
  );
}