How to add favicons to safari on macos
The ability to see favicons for websites in Safari is a convenient. It lets you spot the site you want at a glance by seeing the its icon on your tab, in your bookmark list, and in your history. So, when the feature was added, it was one many people jumped on. But have you ever noticed favicons that go missing or are incorrect, showing the wrong icon?
You can “refresh” the website favicons in Safari on Mac in just a few steps and here, we’ll show you how.
Delete Safari’s favicon cache
If you’re experiencing favicons that aren’t right, maybe they have icons for different websites, clearing the cache and starting over is a good option.
1) Close and quit Safari.
2) Using Finder, click Go > Go to Folder from the menu bar
3) Enter
/Library/Safari/Favicon Cache/ in the pop-up window and click Go.
4) Select all items in the cache folder and move them to the Trash. You can select all with the keyboard shortcut Command + A and then drag them to your Trash or right-click and pick Move to Trash.
5) Empty your Trash or alternatively, delete those items from it. (For help with both options, check out our tutorial on How to Empty Trash on Mac.)
6) Open Safari.
The Safari favicon cache folder will rebuild itself as you visit websites. And, you’ll need to visit the sites you have saved for the favicons to appear. But those that were incorrect or missing should show up correctly.
Alternative option
If you’d rather try something else, there is one other option that may or may not work.
Open the website with the incorrect favicon in a private window in Safari. You can do this easily by right-clicking Safari in your Dock and selecting New Private Window or selecting File > New Private Window from the menu bar.
Visit the website in the private window and when you return to your non-private Safari, the favicon may be correct.
The suggestion comes from the Apple Community Forum. This method did not work for the user with the question, nor did it work for me, however, it’s worth a try if you’d like.
Enabling favicons in Safari
As a reminder, you can enable favicons in Safari on Mac by following these simple steps.
1) With Safari open, click Safari > Preferences from the menu bar.
2) Select the Tabs tab.
3) Check the box for Show website icons in tabs to enable favicons.
Wrapping it up
Hopefully either rebuilding the Safari favicon cache or opening a specific site in a private window works for you. And if you have another method to refresh favicons in Safari that works for you, please share it in the comments below!
Modern versions of Safari for Mac include favicon (favorite icon) support, offering a visual indicator of webpages in the titlebar and tab bar of the Safari browser. Nearly every other web browser on the Mac (and other operating systems) has had favicon support for quite some time, but this is a relatively new addition to Safari and to show the website icons in Safari for Mac you must first enable favicon support in preferences as the feature is not enabled by default.
For some quick background, most websites have favicons that help to differentiate a website URL when a site is active in a browser, bookmarked, or favorited. The small favicon is next to the webpages name when shown in a tab or window of a web browser.
How to Enable Website Icons / favicons in Safari for Mac
- Open the Safari app on the Mac if you haven’t done so already
- Pull down the Safari menu and choose “Preferences”
- Choose “Tabs”
- Toggle the switch for “Show website icons in tabs” so that it’s checked and enabled
The website icons are immediately visible in any tabbed window in Safari or bookmark bar of Safari. Just look at the top of the tabs section of a Safari browser window to see the favicons.
Of course if you decide you don’t like favicons in Safari, you can hide them again just as easily as you enabled them.
How to Hide / Disable Website Icons / favicons in Safari for Mac
- Open the Safari app on the Mac
- Pull down the Safari menu and select “Preferences”
- Select “Tabs”
- Toggle the switch for “Show website icons in tabs” so that it is not checked, thereby disabling favicons in Safari
Hiding Favicons is the default setting in Safari, so this is just returning to that.
If you don’t find this feature available in your version of Safari it’s likely because it does not support favicons, as only modern releases of Safari support the display of website favorite icons. You can either update Safari to the newest version, or you can also download Safari Technology Preview which has the latest beta features available to it, including favicon support and other features that may appear in future releases (the tech preview is sort of like a public beta of Safari).
For anyone wondering, this works the same on the Safari final versions, as well as Safari Technology Preview and Safari Developer Preview builds as well.
