When minifying is enough
For icons, illustrations, and static graphics exported from design tools, the safe one-click pass usually recovers most of the savings. Reach for the Optimizer only when the file still seems large.
Check the result once
Minification should not change appearance, but render the output at the sizes where it will ship before replacing a production asset.
What gets removed
Editor metadata, comments, empty and hidden elements, redundant group nesting, default attribute values, and excess decimal precision make up most SVG waste. These are the first targets because removing them rarely changes rendering.
Safety defaults
Rendering-safe options come first: the viewBox, referenced IDs, gradients, filters, and masks survive, while active content such as scripts is removed. Stronger passes exist but deserve a visual check.