Windows Metro and MacBook Touch Bar icons discontinued
Changelog — 16 October 2024. Two legacy icons left the default favicon package on EasyFaviconGenerator: the Windows Metro tile set (browserconfig.xml plus the mstile-*.png images) and the Safari mask icon (safari-pinned-tab.svg, declared with rel="mask-icon"). Neither is gone from the tool. Both moved behind an explicit opt-in, because the platform features they served were discontinued or superseded by Microsoft and Apple — not because the files stopped working overnight.
That distinction matters, so this post is written as a changelog rather than an obituary: what changed here, what actually ended upstream, what did not change, and the narrow cases where you should still generate these icons.
What changed
| Item | Before | From 16 October 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Windows Metro tiles | Part of the standard package | Off by default; opt-in only |
Safari mask icon (mask-icon) | Part of the standard package | Off by default; opt-in only |
Modern package (favicon.svg, favicon-96x96.png, favicon.ico, apple-touch-icon.png, manifest icons) | Generated by default | Unchanged |
| Existing websites already using the legacy files | — | No action required (see below) |
In the editor, both options now live in the Windows Metro and MacBook Touch Bar icons section under “I still need them: show the legacy options”. Ticking that box gives you exactly what was generated before: for Windows, the 150x150 tile by default (70x70, 310x150 and 310x310 on request), the browserconfig.xml and the msapplication meta tags; for Safari, a traced monochrome safari-pinned-tab.svg with its rel="mask-icon" link and theme colour. Nothing about the output changed — only the default.
Why Windows Metro tiles were dropped
Windows 8 (2012) introduced the tile-based Metro Start screen and let websites supply tile artwork through browserconfig.xml, referenced by a handful of mstile images in different sizes. It was always a Windows-only side channel: pinned-site tiles for Internet Explorer and the Start screen, never something other browsers read.
That world has ended in stages rather than on one date. Microsoft replaced Internet Explorer with Edge, and the current Chromium-based Edge does not read browserconfig.xml. Windows 8.1 — the last release built around the Metro Start screen — reached the end of support on 10 January 2023. In honesty, the earlier one-line version of this post compressed that into “Windows 8 support ended in January 2023”; the precise statement is the 8.1 date above, and the practical point stands: no current Microsoft browser or supported Windows release consumes these files, so shipping them to every visitor is clutter, not compatibility.
Why the Safari mask icon was dropped
The mask icon arrived with Safari 9 and OS X El Capitan (2015) as the monochrome SVG shown for pinned tabs, and it later appeared in the Touch Bar era of the MacBook Pro (2016 onwards) — which is why our editor grouped the two together. A separate single-colour artwork made sense when pinned tabs could not reuse the normal favicon.
Two things then removed its reason to exist. Since Safari 12 (2018), Safari uses your regular favicon for pinned tabs instead of the mask icon. And the Touch Bar hardware itself was phased out: Apple removed it from the redesigned 14- and 16-inch MacBook Pro in 2021 and discontinued the last Touch Bar model, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, in 2023. Here, too, the earlier version of this post was too tidy — “discontinued in 2021” describes the phase-out starting, not the final model leaving the range. Either way, a current Safari on a current Mac has no surface left that needs a dedicated mask-icon file.
What “discontinued” does and does not mean
- It is the platform feature that ended, not your files. A
browserconfig.xmlorsafari-pinned-tab.svgalready on your server does not break anything. Current browsers either ignore the declarations or no longer need them (Safari 12 and later show the regular favicon in pinned tabs), exactly as browsers that never supported them always did. - No urgent migration follows from this. If your site still ships these files, you can leave them until your next tidy-up. When you do tidy up, remove the
msapplication-config/msapplication-TileColormeta tags and therel="mask-icon"link together with the files they point to, and keep everything else. - Nothing else was discontinued.
favicon.ico, the Apple touch icon, the SVG favicon and the web app manifest icons are all current and unchanged. This change removed two platform-specific extras, not part of the core package — our compatibility matrix shows which file each current browser and platform actually uses. - “Off by default” is not “removed”. We are not claiming nobody could ever need these icons again; we are claiming a new public website in 2024 should not carry them unless it can name the old system it is serving.
When you should still enable them
Tick the legacy box only for a concrete, named audience, for example:
- an intranet, kiosk or dashboard pinned on maintained Windows 8.1 / Internet Explorer or old EdgeHTML machines;
- a fleet of older Macs running Safari 9 to 11, which use the mask icon for pinned tabs;
- reproducing a historical favicon package exactly, for archival or compliance reasons.
For a public website aimed at current browsers, leave them off: generate the default package and verify the result with the favicon checker. If you are unsure whether your audience is “concrete and named” or just habit, that uncertainty is the answer — skip the legacy files, and add them back the day a real device asks for them. They are one checkbox away in the favicon generator.
Permanent link to this changelog entry: https://easyfavicongenerator.com/blog/windows-metro-and-macbook-touch-bar-icons-discontinued