Safari 8 Favorites Bar Favicon Issues

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Safari 8 Favorites Bar Favicon Issues

Running Safari 8 / Yosemite on a new rMBP, everything's up to date.

Basically, as you can see, Safari is selectively providing favicons for certain websites and not others. I've Googled my brains out on this issue but everything seems to reference digging into some files that I can't seem to find in Yosemite. Any thoughts as to why or how to fix this? It's minor I know but annoying, as like many of you here I really like being able to browse by icon rather than reading text, and Safari 8 doesn't seem to be doing us any favors in that department.

Update: I had a brainstorm. See the Apple favicon next to the URL in the screenshot? I dragged it into the Favorites bar, and lo and behold, it created a link with the proper favicon! But the next two sites I tried it with (sites I have visited but not bookmarked) no go. I tried three more that I have never visited, and they all worked. What gives?

MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid 2014), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Oct 23, 2014 7:49 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 3, 2014 12:32 AM in response to schlemiel

I could not get it to work with sites that were already in favorites. It is not preventing me using Safari but it is irritating. I feel sure that is a simple solution because in the bookmarks window all the icons are correctly shown. Hmm…

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Answer 2

schlemiel Author

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Nov 6, 2014 9:16 AM in response to Derek Cassells

You've got favicons displaying in the bookmarks bar? All I got are these line drawings of books...

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Answer 3

Nov 6, 2014 9:19 AM in response to schlemiel

Hi ..

WebpageIcons database may be corrupted.

Open a Finder window. From the Finder menu bar click Go > Go to Folder

Type or copy paste the following:

~/Library/Safari/WebpageIcons.db

Click Go then move the WebpageIcons.db file to the Trash.

Quit and relaunch Safari. It may take up to a day for your webpage icons to re populate.

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Answer 4

schlemiel Author

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Nov 6, 2014 9:33 AM in response to Carolyn Samit

I tried this, twice, as well as deleting the contents of the Touch Icons folder where I found the favicons. Safari repopulated the icons as expected except the missing ones are still missing. To add insult to injury I can see that Safari downloaded the missing favicons to the Touch Icons folder along with the others, but is choosing not to display them.

EDIT: I suppose I should add that I have an iPhone 5c running iOS 8.1 with bookmark syncing with Safari. From the phone, I have a somewhat overlapping but not entirely similar set of links missing favicons.

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Answer 5

ryanrdk

Level 1

2 points

Apr 7, 2015 5:24 AM in response to schlemiel

There is a tedious work around using Chrome that involves the use of a Windows computer...

All you have to do is:

1. Manage/Add your Bookmarks in Chrome (the ones you want in Safari)

2. Download the iCloud Bookmarks extension for Chrome.

(https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/icloud-bookmarks/fkepacicchenbjecpbpbc lokcabebhah?hl=en)

3. Sync that with your iCloud account (you will need the iCloud for Windows; Set up and use iCloud for Windows - Apple Support)

and pronto it should sync the bookmarks with the Favicons!

Tips:

If the Favicons are blank in Chrome, simply refresh the the webpage and wait for it to fully load. It should load the Favicon thereafter.
If you have tons of Bookmarks in Safari and don't want to spend all that time re-adding them in Chrome; download Chrome on OS X (make sure to sign in),

go into settings, and click "import bookmarks and settings..." and select Safari. It should sync it with your Chrome on Windows

if you sign in with the same email address.

You shouldn't have to go this far for such a simple task! Please send feedback to Safari about this mind-numbingly stupid feature!

(http://www.apple.com/feedback/safari.html)

MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Early 2015)

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