Guide
How to compress a PNG file
Drop the PNG on Anyfile’s Compress PNG page and a smaller PNG downloads straight away, still a PNG and still transparent. It works by using fewer colours, the way TinyPNG does, so screenshots, logos and flat graphics often shrink by half or more.
Step by step
Open the compressor
Go to Compress PNG in any current browser.
Drop the PNG
Drag it onto the drop card, or click Choose files. Make it smaller starts at once; several files come back in one ZIP.
Check the result
When the card says Done, the smaller PNG is in your downloads, with the same name. If it couldn’t get smaller without losing quality, you’re told, and the original is kept as it was.
Choose exactly how small, if you need to
For a precise size, drop the PNG on the PNG page, choose Edit file, then Compress in the toolbar. Under Make it smaller by, pick Target size (in KB or MB), Percentage or Colours, and compare the Before and After close-ups. The Download button shows the new size before you save.
A PNG keeps every pixel exactly, which is why it’s big. Compressing it keeps the PNG format and its transparency but limits the picture to at most 256 colours, chosen to suit it. On flat colours, text and icons you won’t see the difference; on a soft gradient or a photo you might, so Smooth gradients (dithering) is on by default to hide the steps.
Two settings in the Compress panel matter most. Allow smaller dimensions if needed lets a very large picture be scaled down when fewer colours alone can’t reach your target. Format switches to JPEG or WebP, which is far smaller for a photo; WebP also keeps transparency. An animated PNG is saved as its first frame only.
Nothing is uploaded: your browser reads the file and makes the new one on your device. See how it works, and how to check.
Other ways to do it
On a Mac. Preview’s Export menu can save a PNG as JPEG or HEIC, which is smaller, but it has no way to reduce a PNG’s colours, so a PNG exported from Preview stays about the same size.
Command-line tools. pngquant does the same colour reduction and OptiPNG squeezes the file without changing a pixel. Both are free and excellent for batches, if you’re happy in a terminal.
Change the format. If the PNG is a photo with no transparency, compressing it as a JPG gives a far smaller file than any PNG can.
When Anyfile is quicker
For a few files, or when you need to hit a size limit exactly, Anyfile is quicker: the numbers shown come from real encodes, not estimates. For hundreds of PNGs in a build pipeline, pngquant in a script is the better tool.
Questions
Will the PNG keep its transparency?
Yes. It stays a PNG, and see-through areas stay see-through, including soft edges.
How much smaller will it get?
Screenshots, logos and graphics with flat colours often shrink by half or more. Photos saved as PNG shrink too, but turn into far smaller files as JPG or WebP.
Is compressing a PNG lossless?
Not quite: the number of colours is reduced, so the file is smaller. It’s chosen to look the same at normal sizes. Keep the original if you’ll edit it again.
Is my file uploaded?
No. It’s compressed by your browser, on your device; nothing is sent to a server.