How to refresh bookmark favicons in chrome

Question

I updated favicons for a bunch of my websites. Refreshing the website does indeed show the updated favicon in the browser tab, however the bookmarks for those websites still have the old favicon.

Short of deleting and re-adding each bookmark, is there any way to get Chrome to refresh the bookmarks of each website? Why doesn't just visiting the website update the bookmark icon too?

Solution 1

Have you tried clearing the cache then restarting Chrome? Try that first. If it doesn’t work, then you’ll have to force it as follows.

1. Close Chrome
2. Open your User Data folder
3. Delete the Favicons file
4. Run Chrome
5. Visit sites to force the icons to be re-downloaded

Solution 2

Did you try to force the refresh when you are on the page and press Ctrl + R?

[EDIT] (Credits to James, see his comment) try to refresh and empty the cache with Ctrl + Shift+ R

[Source on Google Chrome Help Forum]

Solution 3

My issue was that despite deleting the favicon for a locally hosted site, Chrome still displayed it.

This comment on a Chromium issue says:

Favicons are not stored in the cache, they're stored in one of the SQLite databases. So they don't get cleared with the cache. This is a good thing since all your bookmarks would lose their icons until you visited them again.

This explains why clearing my cache did not solve the problem.

Here's what I did to clear the favicons for my site:

1. Closed Chrome in order to release its file locks
2. Downloaded the appropriate SQLite command-line shell for my OS
3. Extracted the archive
4. Opened my user data directory
5. Deleted the Favicons-journal file
6. Copied my Favicons file into the same directory as the SQLite command-line shell
7. Opened Command Prompt
8. Changed directory to that which contains the SQLite command-line shell
9. Executed sqlite3 from Command Prompt
10. Ran the SQL which follows this list
11. Moved the Favicons file from my SQLite command-line shell directory back into my user data directory

.open Favicons

DELETE FROM
    favicons
WHERE
    id
IN (
    SELECT
        icon_id
    FROM
        icon_mapping
    WHERE
        page_url
    LIKE
        '%localhost:%'
);

DELETE FROM
    favicon_bitmaps
WHERE
    icon_id
IN (
    SELECT
        icon_id
    FROM
        icon_mapping
    WHERE
        page_url
    LIKE
        '%localhost:%'
);

DELETE FROM
    icon_mapping
WHERE
    page_url
LIKE
    '%localhost:%'
;

Adjust this to suit the URLs which you wish to clear the favicons for. In my case, the targeted URLs were along the lines of http://localhost:8000/.

Solution 4

Actually all you need is to browse to www.site.com/favicon.ico and you will see the cached old icon, click refresh (ctrl+shift+R) or (ctrl+F5) and you will see the new one. Go back to www.site.com and enjoy the new favicon.

Solution 5

Looked through suggestions to change “stuck” favicons in my bookmarks bar. I took the easy way out and installed the extension Bookmark Favicon Changer.

It took me 5 minutes to fix the problem that had been bugging me for months – and that’s including deleting the extension after use!

View more solutions

Comments

[Sethu N]

Are you using Chrome's bookmark sync feature? If not give that a try as it may cause the favicons to be updated.

[seesharper]

i am using it already

[Revious]

Have you tried this chrome extension? It's the only for massive refresing. chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/bookmark-favicon-changer/…

[Cameron Mark Lewis]

Note: sometimes .ico files actually contain two scaled images (e.g. 32x32 and a 16x16) so updates to one will not show up on the other.

[seesharper]

tried. didnt work

[Baub]

To expand on this, if you do Shift+Ctrl+R, then it'll reload without cache, therefor refreshing your favicon. I just tried it myself and it worked.

[Revious]

But it requires to visit hundred of sites... is there another method?

[Synetech]

You can try setting a bookmark while having Chrome Sync enabled and set to sync bookmarks. In my experience, it automatically touches every single bookmark, causing them all to float to the top of the history, and ostensibly, also refreshing their icons. I posted a bug-report about this behavior a while back, so they may or may not have fixed it.

[niico]

I do not have a favicons file

[Elder Geek]

Could not obtain through ad supported link provided (possibly due to having AdBlock installed)

[Ambrose Little]

Current version seems to stick things under a "Default" folder off the root user data folder. The favicons file is there, and if you delete it (while all Chrome windows are closed), it will refetch them the next time you visit the sites).

[mastazi]

ctrl+R will not work because it is the same as F5, the correct one is ctrl+shift+R which is the same as ctrl+F5.

[Hossam Hossny]

@mastazi edited, thanks!