Safari is no longer displaying the favicon icons associated with sites I have in my Bookmarks. Some of them do display but the majority are now displaying only the generic blue circle-globe icon. Why is this happening? I have not done any resets and have not changed any of Safari's settings.
Hi jwsound,
You don't say what version OS X you're using. I'm using Mavericks 10.9.5. I can tell you a bit about your fav icons. I don't know if this applies to Yosemite or beyond.
Safari saves the fav icons for the sites you have visited in it's own little file. It is called WebpageIcons.db
It's in this folder under your name:: /Library/Safari
Safari will delete it without prompting you if you Reset or Clear your History. There might be other instances where it get deleted, not sure. It then creates a new "empty" file with the same name.
I got tired of Safari randomly deleting them, so I made a duplicate of the file (highlight the file and hit Command D from the Finder window). You can copy it to another spot or leave it there. Safari won't delete the duplicate.
If you have done a backup of some kind of your Library, you could search for it. If you've done a Time Machine backup, that's usually the best and easiest way to find the older file. Then just replace the empty file with your older file (copy over, delete and paste, etc)
Good Luck!
Open the Finder.
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.
Restart your Mac then launch Safari. It may take a few days for Safari to reload the icons.
If Carolyn's post doesn't work, you can try this. Be aware this is a system hack.
Carolyn,
Are you saying that Safari will reload all your icons, even if you don't visit each page? Just recreate the file (webpageicons.db) and Safari will reload all the favicons in the background?
Just in my experience, Safari has not automatically repopulated any icons, unless I visit the page. If you have hundreds, or more like thousands of bookmarks, it would take some time to visit them all.
I haven't tried that approach for quite some time, as I started just saving the file. Maybe since then Safari has improved the way it handles the icon database.
No, the webpageIcons.db file does NOT repopulate the Favicons automatically! You must re-visit each page for the Favicon to re-appear. (Why do people insist on posting inaccurate information?)
Additionally the webpageIcons.db is in a HIDDEN directory called Library under Safari in your User directory. There are posts on here on how to unhide it. If you are running El Captan, go to Finder, navigate to your user directory, choose View, View Options and there'll be an option to show Library.
Safari bookmarks have lost the favicon icons
