About SVG Optimizer

Minify and clean SVG markup by removing metadata and comments. Part of the DevTools Surf developer suite. Browse more tools in the Images collection.

Use Cases

• Reducing icon SVG file sizes for faster page rendering
• Cleaning Illustrator exports before adding to a design system
• Optimizing inline SVGs to reduce HTML document size
• Preparing SVG assets for icon font or sprite sheet generation

Tips

• Remove editor metadata that bloats file size significantly
• Check the visual output after optimization to verify fidelity
• Strip unnecessary comments and empty groups from SVG exports

Fun Facts

• SVG 1.0 became a W3C Recommendation in September 2001, but didn't gain broad browser support until the early 2010s.
• Unoptimized SVGs from tools like Illustrator can contain 40-60% redundant metadata and editor-specific attributes.
• SVGO, the most popular SVG optimization library, was created by Kir Belevich in 2012 and is used by most build tools today.

FAQ

What does it remove?

Metadata (editor comments, XML declaration), inline CSS that could be attributes, invisible elements, redundant precision in path coordinates, comments.

Is the optimization lossless?

For visual appearance yes. Precision reduction (6 decimal places → 2) is technically lossy but visually identical. Toggle higher precision if you need pixel-perfect detail.

What about animations?

CSS and SMIL animations preserved. The optimizer doesn't remove semantic structure your JavaScript might target.

How does it compare to SVGO?

Based on SVGO defaults. For advanced plugins (custom attribute keeping, namespace rules), use SVGO CLI. This tool covers 90% of cases.