Generate a Transparent PNG
A completely empty PNG with a genuine alpha channel. The classic use is the 1×1 transparent pixel — the modern replacement for spacer.gif — but any size works as a blank canvas, a fallback asset, or a placeholder that occupies space and shows nothing.
What it's actually for
A lazy-loading placeholder. Point src at a 1×1 transparent PNG and put the
real URL in data-src, so the element has a valid image and never shows a broken icon.
A default or fallback asset. Somewhere in most codebases there's a field that requires an image and a case where there shouldn't be one. A transparent PNG satisfies the requirement and renders nothing.
Blocking an image without breaking a layout. Substituting a transparent PNG for an unwanted asset keeps the box the same size and removes the content.
A blank canvas at a set size, to composite onto with Overlay images or to establish exact output dimensions.
Worth knowing: a 1×1 transparent PNG is about 68 bytes as raw data, so it's frequently inlined as a data URI rather than served as a file — PNG to Base64 will give you that string, and it saves a request entirely. Note also that the file produced here is a canvas export and will be a few hundred bytes rather than the theoretical minimum; for a truly byte-minimal file, the well-known hand-crafted base64 constant is smaller than anything a browser will encode.
Don't reach for this to remove a background
The commonest reason people search for "transparent PNG" is wanting to make an existing image's background transparent, which this doesn't do — it generates emptiness rather than removing anything. For that: Background removes a near-solid colour from an image, Remove alpha goes the other way and flattens transparency onto a colour, and Transparency checker reports whether a file has any transparency at all.
FAQ
Is it really fully transparent?
Yes — every pixel has an alpha value of zero. Viewers show it as their own checkerboard or as nothing at all, which is why the download row's thumbnail looks empty. That's correct.
Why is the file bigger than 68 bytes?
Because it comes from the browser's PNG encoder, which writes a standard header and colour-type information rather than the hand-optimised minimum. It's still tiny. Remove metadata will shave off anything ancillary.
Can I get a transparent JPG?
No. JPEG has no alpha channel at all — this is a hard format limitation, not a missing feature. Use PNG or WebP.
Should I use a transparent GIF instead?
No reason to in 2026. PNG has better alpha (256 levels rather than on/off) and universal support. spacer.gif can rest.