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Level 2

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Safari losing Bookmark icons...why?

Lately my Safari bookmarks are losing their icons. This happens a lot recently, though I didn't do anything that I know of to alter Safari and I have not upgraded my OS for about a year. I'm using Lion (10.7.5). I tend to install updates as they appear and perhaps Software Update installed Safari 6 (I now have 6.0.2) and I didn't take notice, but that the problem continues indicates it's not a one-time thing.

Yes, when I go to the sites the icons appear afterward in the bookmarks, but within a day or so they're gone again. This is actually a rather annoying problem because it's much harder to find sites in the bookmarks without the icons. Any ideas?

Mac Pro 2.66 GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.1)

Posted on Mar 9, 2013 12:23 PM

17 replies

Sep 6, 2013 3:25 PM in response to Ken Spiker

It used to be that when I cleared history - the bookmark icons went away but would return after I started returning to websites and frequenting them.

However, in the last couple of months, since I cleared history, when I return to websites, the favicons or bookmark icons (whatever they are called) are not returning.

All I get are the blue circles. The deeper question for me is why the are not returning?

Really getting disappointed in Safari.

Dec 26, 2014 2:49 PM in response to Youngman44

A little late the party but the following steps resolved this issue (no bookmark icon update) for me on 10.7.5 running Safari 5.1.7

Go to the ~/Library/Safari/ directory and locate the file WebpageIcons.db

Rename to WebpageIcons.bak

Quit and Restart Safari

Navigate to a test webpage and verify icon update, I used www.tsn.ca

Some important notes

I reset Safari ( all) with no resolution
I had reinstalled OS with no resolution
Looking at the timestamp of WebpageIcons.db I noticed it had not updated in some months roughly corresponding to the time I started to see this issue.
This is my first attempt at clearing this issue. Unsure if it will return but looks like an issue with the db file not getting updated/called/locked.
Any issues you can revert to the original db by deleting the active one and renaming WebpageIcons.bak to WebpageIcons.db and restarting Safari.

Safari losing Bookmark icons...why?