How to get the URL Icons on Bookmarks - Google Chrome?

Question

I am using Google Chrome 62.0.3202.75 on Windows 7 64 Bit OS. For some reasons I had to do a clean reinstall of the Windows 7. I had however taken backup of important settings and files from the System drive including the Bookmarks file of Google Chrome.

Then I also installed Google Chrome (From the web) and restored the Bookmarks file.

Now all my bookmarks are back in the same order they earlier were on the bookmarks bar. There's one small problem though. The icons are missing from them. All it shows is a white rectangle as icon. See the attached screenshot. I tried accessing the respective websites by clicking on the bookmarks bar and restart chrome but it did not help.

I want to avoid accessing each and every site again and adding it to Bookmarks bar again.

Is there any shorter way to get back the icons on the bookmarks bar?

Thanks.

Solution 1

The only way I have found to get the icons to show up is to visit the site via the bookmark. You don't need to remove and re-add the bookmark, just click it and wait a few seconds for it to load and the icon shows up again. Typically, I will visit all the sites directly in the bookmarks toolbar (where the icons are always visible) but leave the ones in the folders until I actually need to visit them.

This behavior exists in Firefox as well.

---

Update:

After a little searching, I found a Chrome extension called Bookmark Favicon Changer which can batch process the bookmark icons. In my brief tests, it was able to successfully change about 80% of my icon-less bookmarks (they were all old ones, so not all the sites may have been active anymore) but it only detected that it had changed the icon about 10% of the time (basically it would change it but then give a warning Cannot confirm changing of bookmark favicon at ...). It was slow, but the advantage is that it was completely automated once you had started the process.

Solution 2

One option that does not involve installing any extensions is through the Bookmark Manager.

Select all the bookmarks in any given folder (e.g., every bookmark from the Bookmarks Bar), right-click and choose "Open all in new window," wait for a few seconds, then close the window (might even work if you close it immediately). This usually gets back all the missing bookmarks for me.

Comments

[rajeev]

Thanks. Yes I had already tried that too as mentioned in my post but it did not work in my case.

[techturtle]

You mentioned not wanting to visit and "adding it to Bookmarks bar again" so I was just pointing out that merely visiting the site will restore the icon. Hopefully someone else will have a better solution for you. I would be curious about it as well.

[rajeev]

Yes that's right. I also mentioned that I did try accessing the website just by clicking on bookmark and hoping that it will resolve the icon but it did not.

[techturtle]

@rajeev I found an extension that might work for you. Check the link in my updated answer.

[Regi Mathew]

Very good suggestion. Thanks