---
name: Identicon
slug: identicon
category: component
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: A generated default avatar derived deterministically from an
  identifier, so the same account always gets the same abstract pattern without
  uploading anything.
aliases:
  - name: generative avatar
    source: community
  - name: default avatar
    source: community
  - name: generated avatar
    source: community
tags:
  - icons
  - illustration
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - avatar
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso:
    - seed-color
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: "Wikipedia: Identicon"
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon
  - title: "GitHub blog: Identicons"
    url: https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/identicons/
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: an account needs a face before the user provides one
---

An identicon is a picture computed from a string. Hash the identifier (a username, an
email, an account id), spend the bits on a small pattern and a hue, and you have a mark
that is stable, unique enough to tell rows apart, and free of any decision the user had
to make. Nothing is stored and nothing is uploaded: the same handle recomputes to the
same pattern on every server, in every session, forever.

That is the whole distinction from its neighbours. An [avatar](/avatar) is the slot, and
the picture in it usually came from the person. An identicon is what fills that slot
before a picture exists, which is why it reads as a fallback rather than as a portrait,
and why a wall of them in an [avatar group](/avatar-group) still lets you follow one
person down a list of commits. Initials are the other common filler and they are not the
same thing: initials carry meaning from the name, an identicon carries none, which is a
feature when the identifier is an id nobody should have to read.

Don Park coined the word in 2007 for small patterns generated from a visitor's IP
address, as a way of giving anonymous commenters a recognisable face. GitHub made the
form famous a few years later: five columns by five rows of blocks, mirrored down the
middle so the shape reads as a deliberate emblem rather than as noise, tinted with a hue
taken from the same hash. Because the left three columns are mirrored into the right
two, a 5 by 5 identicon only spends fifteen bits on its pattern, which is plenty to
separate the handful of people on one screen and nowhere near enough to be an identity.

Treat it as a placeholder with manners. It should be recognisable but not authoritative,
never used as a security signal (two accounts can and do collide), and it should give
way the moment a real picture arrives. Give it an accessible name from the identifier it
was made from, not from the shape: the pattern means nothing to anyone who cannot see
it.