SVG Minify
What SVG Minify actually does
Minifying a vector file is only useful if the picture survives, and the usual way to find out is to download the result and open it. That loop is slow enough that people either skip minifying or skip checking. This shows the original and the minified file side by side with the new size as a percentage of the old one, so the trade is visible in the same screen where it is made. The passes here are the conservative ones: content that never affected the rendering is removed, and geometry is left alone.
How to use it
- Choose one or more SVG files.
- Optionally keep comments or metadata if something downstream reads them.
- Run it and compare the two drawings and the two sizes.
- Download the smaller file, or the whole batch as a zip.
Useful for
- Trimming an icon set before it ships in a bundle.
- Removing an editor's provenance block from an export without touching the artwork.
- Checking how much of a file's weight is actually drawing instructions.
Limits worth knowing
- Path coordinates are not rounded and shapes are not merged, so the reductions here are smaller than tools that alter geometry, and correspondingly safer.
- A file that is mostly an embedded raster image will barely shrink; the image is the weight, not the markup.
- Comments and metadata are removed by default, which is a problem if a build step reads them.
Questions people ask
Will minifying change how it looks?
It should not, and the point of the side-by-side preview is that you do not have to take that on trust.
Why is the saving smaller than other tools report?
This does not round path coordinates. Coordinate rounding gives the largest headline numbers and is also what makes shapes drift.
Can I minify a whole folder?
Drop as many files as you like and download them as a zip.