This free favicon downloader finds every icon a website declares and lets you save the original files: the favicon.ico in the site root, PNG icons in several sizes, SVG icons, the apple-touch-icon iPhones use on the home screen, and the larger icons listed in a web app manifest. Type a domain above, press Find favicons, and you get a preview of each icon at its real pixel size with a Download button, plus Google’s cached copy of the icon as a second opinion.
People use a favicon downloader for ordinary reasons: a designer checking which icon sizes a competitor ships, a developer debugging why their own favicon doesn’t appear, someone building a dashboard or a start page that needs site icons, or a writer who needs a clean icon for a slide that mentions a tool. This page explains how favicons work, which sizes matter, how browsers pick one, how to add a favicon to your own site, and why a favicon sometimes refuses to update.
What is a favicon?
A favicon is the small image a website shows in the browser tab, the address bar, the bookmarks bar, the history list and on phone home screens. The name comes from “favorites icon”, from the era when Internet Explorer 5 showed it next to saved favorites in 1999, and the original file was always a favicon.ico sitting in the root folder of the site. The Wikipedia article on favicons covers that history well.
Today a site declares its icons in the HTML <head> with <link> tags. The MDN reference for the rel attribute defines rel="icon" as the standard way to do it. Browsers still request /favicon.ico on their own when a page declares nothing, which is why so many sites keep that file around even when they also ship PNG and SVG icons.
A single website rarely has a single favicon. A typical modern setup looks like this:
- a
favicon.icoin the root, holding 16x16, 32x32 and sometimes 48x48 bitmaps in one file - an SVG icon for browsers that support vector favicons, sometimes with a dark-mode variant
- a 180x180
apple-touch-icon.pngfor iPhone and iPad home screens - 192x192 and 512x512 PNGs listed in a web app manifest for Android and installed web apps
- occasionally a monochrome
mask-iconSVG for older Safari pinned tabs
That spread is why a good favicon downloader lists everything instead of returning one image.
How does this free favicon downloader work?
The favicon downloader reads the page you enter, finds every icon it declares, and shows you each file at its real size. It’s the quickest way to download favicon from site pages without digging through source code. Behind the scenes it works in four steps.
- Fetch the page. Bookmend’s tools API loads the HTML of the URL you typed, following redirects, the way a browser would when you first open the site.
- Read the icon tags. It collects every
<link>whoserelcontainsicon,apple-touch-iconormask-icon, and turns eachhrefinto a full address. - Read the manifest. If the page links a web app manifest with
<link rel="manifest">, the API opens it and adds each entry in itsiconsarray. - Check the fallback. If
/favicon.icoexists at the root, it’s added as the default icon.
Each result then loads through a proxy so your browser can preview it and save it. Websites normally block other sites from reading their images directly (that’s the browser’s cross-origin protection), so the proxy fetches the file and passes it back. It only passes image files, only up to 1 MB each, and beyond a short cache for speed it doesn’t store them.
The preview reads the image’s naturalWidth and naturalHeight once it loads, so the size badge shows what the file actually contains rather than what the site claims in its sizes attribute. That matters more than you’d expect: it’s common to find a tag that says sizes="192x192" pointing at a 48x48 file, or an apple-touch-icon that is really 57x57 from 2012.
What the tool can’t see
The tool reads the HTML the server sends. A few cases fall outside that:
- Icons added by JavaScript. Some single-page apps insert or swap favicons after the page loads, for example to show an unread count. A server-side reader never runs that code.
- Sites that block automated requests. Some sites answer bots with a 403, a challenge page or a rate limit. The Google preview below the results often still shows an icon in that case.
- Logged-in areas. The tool sees what a signed-out visitor sees, so an app’s internal pages may use a different icon than its public home page.
- Files over 1 MB. Rare for a favicon, but oversized manifest icons exist. Use the Copy URL button and open the file directly.
When live lookups aren’t available, the page still shows Google’s cached favicon for the domain, with links to open each size in a new tab.
How to get favicon from website source code by hand
You can get a favicon from a website without any tool by reading its source code. This is worth knowing even if you use the tool above, because it’s how you confirm what a site really declares.
In Chrome, Edge, Brave or Firefox:
- Open the website.
- Press
Ctrl+Uon Windows, Linux or ChromeOS, orCmd+Option+Uon a Mac, to view the page source. - Press
Ctrl+ForCmd+Fand search foricon. - Copy the
hrefof each<link rel="icon">,rel="shortcut icon"orrel="apple-touch-icon"tag. If it starts with/, add the domain in front. - Open that address in a new tab, right-click the image and choose Save image as.
In Safari on a Mac, first turn on Safari → Settings → Advanced → Show features for web developers (the wording as of September 2026; older versions say “Show Develop menu in menu bar”), then use Develop → Show Page Source.
If you find no icon tags at all, try https://example.com/favicon.ico directly. And if you want the manifest icons, search the source for manifest, open the linked .webmanifest or .json file, and read its icons list.
Extract favicon from website pages with developer tools
To extract a favicon from a website with developer tools, open DevTools with F12 (or Cmd+Option+I on a Mac), go to the Elements panel, expand <head> and look for the <link> icon tags. Hovering a URL shows a preview. The Network panel with the Img filter shows which favicon file the browser actually requested after a reload, which is the fastest way to answer “which of these five icons is my browser using?”
Favicon formats and sizes explained
Favicons come in a handful of formats and a fairly standard set of sizes. The table below covers what you’ll see in the results above and where each one is used.
| Icon | Typical size | Format | How it’s declared | Where it’s used |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Classic favicon | 16x16, 32x32, 48x48 in one file | ICO | /favicon.ico in the root, or <link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico"> |
Browser tabs, bookmarks, old browsers, tools that only check the root |
| PNG tab icon | 32x32 (sometimes 16x16, 96x96) | PNG | <link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="32x32"> |
Browser tabs and bookmarks in modern browsers |
| SVG icon | Scales to any size | SVG | <link rel="icon" type="image/svg+xml"> |
Modern Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Safari tabs; can adapt to dark mode |
| Apple touch icon | 180x180 | PNG | <link rel="apple-touch-icon"> |
iPhone and iPad home screen shortcuts, some bookmark grids |
| Manifest icons | 192x192 and 512x512 | PNG (sometimes WebP or SVG) | icons array in the web app manifest |
Android home screen, installed web apps, splash screens |
| Mask icon | Any (vector) | Single-colour SVG | <link rel="mask-icon" color="#000000"> |
Pinned tabs in older Safari versions |
A few details worth knowing:
- ICO files are containers. One
favicon.icocan hold several bitmaps. When you download it, you get every embedded size; the preview shows one of them. If you need a specific size as a PNG, pick a PNG icon from the list or open the .ico in an image editor. - SVG favicons stay sharp at every size and can include a CSS
prefers-color-schememedia query so the icon changes in dark mode. The tool labels these “scales to any size” because an SVG has no fixed pixel dimensions. - Manifest icons are the largest a site usually publishes. If you need a high-resolution logo for a slide, a 512x512 manifest icon is usually the best source.
- Apple touch icons have no transparency on iOS. iOS fills transparent areas, so these files are usually solid squares.
How do browsers choose which favicon to show?
Browsers pick the favicon that best matches the space they need to fill. According to MDN, when a page has several <link rel="icon"> tags, the browser uses their media, type and sizes attributes to choose the most appropriate one; if several are equally suitable, it uses the last one listed. If the chosen icon turns out to be unusable, for example an unsupported format, it moves on to the next best.
In practice:
- Tabs use a small icon, so browsers favour a 16x16 or 32x32 bitmap, or an SVG if one is declared and supported.
- High-density screens often pick the 32x32 version for a 16-pixel slot, because it has twice the detail.
- iPhone and iPad don’t use
rel="icon"for home screen shortcuts at all; they look forapple-touch-icon. - Android and installed web apps read the manifest’s
iconsand pick the size closest to what the launcher needs. - No declared icon means the browser requests
/favicon.icofrom the root. If that fails, it shows a generic globe or blank page icon.
Chrome stores the favicons it has seen in a separate database in your profile folder (a file called Favicons), which is why bookmarks keep their icons even when you’re offline and why a stale icon can outlive a site change.
How to add a favicon to your own site
To add a favicon to your own site, create a few image files, upload them to your site root and add link tags to the <head> of every page. The minimal, current setup looks like this:
<link rel="icon" href="/favicon.ico" sizes="32x32">
<link rel="icon" href="/icon.svg" type="image/svg+xml">
<link rel="apple-touch-icon" href="/apple-touch-icon.png">
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.webmanifest">And the manifest file:
{
"name": "Example",
"icons": [
{ "src": "/icon-192.png", "type": "image/png", "sizes": "192x192" },
{ "src": "/icon-512.png", "type": "image/png", "sizes": "512x512" }
]
}What each file does:
- favicon.ico (32x32) covers every browser and every tool that only looks in the root. The
sizes="32x32"attribute helps Chrome prefer the SVG instead of the ICO when both are declared. - icon.svg gives modern browsers a sharp icon at any size and lets you support dark mode.
- apple-touch-icon.png (180x180) covers iPhone and iPad home screens. Use a solid background.
- manifest icons (192 and 512) cover Android, installed web apps and anything that wants a large icon.
Also keep Google Search in mind. Google’s favicon guidelines ask for a square icon of at least 8x8 pixels (larger than 48x48 recommended), a stable URL, one favicon per hostname, and a home page and icon file that Googlebot and Googlebot-Image are allowed to crawl. Google reads icon, shortcut icon, apple-touch-icon and apple-touch-icon-precomposed.
For more on the manifest format, see MDN’s web app manifest icons reference.
After you publish, run your own domain through the favicon downloader. It shows exactly which icons are reachable, their real sizes, and whether a tag points at a missing file (it’ll show “Couldn’t load”).
Why doesn’t my favicon update?
A favicon usually doesn’t update because the browser cached the old one. Browsers keep favicons in their own store, separate from the normal page cache, and don’t re-check them on every visit. So you replace the file, reload the page, and the old icon stays.
Here’s how to force a refresh, from least to most effort:
- Open the icon file directly (for example
https://example.com/favicon.ico) and pressCtrl+Shift+RorCmd+Shift+Rfor a hard reload. Then reload the page. - Try a private or incognito window. It starts with an empty cache, so if the new icon shows there, your site is fine and only your normal profile is stale.
- Change the URL. Rename the file (
favicon-v2.ico) or add a version query in the tag, likehref="/favicon.ico?v=2". Browsers treat it as a new file. - Check your server and CDN. A CDN or server cache can keep serving the old file for hours or days. Purge it, and check the
Cache-Controlheader on the icon. - Wait for Google. Search results only change after Google recrawls your home page, which Google says can take several days to several weeks.
Bookmarks are a special case. Chrome stores bookmark icons in its Favicons database, and a bookmark usually picks up a new icon only after you visit the page again. If you have hundreds of bookmarks with missing icons, that’s often a clue that some of those pages no longer load at all, which is exactly what the free bookmark rot check is for.
Troubleshooting favicon problems
Most favicon problems come down to caching, wrong paths or blocked requests. Use this table to match what you see to the cause.
| What you see | Likely cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Tool finds no icons | Site declares none and has no /favicon.ico, or blocks bots |
Check the Google preview; view the source manually; try the Wayback Machine |
| “Couldn’t load” on one icon | Tag points to a missing file, a file over 1 MB, or a non-image | Open the Copy URL link directly; fix the path on your own site |
| Declared size doesn’t match the badge | The sizes attribute is wrong or outdated |
Trust the rendered size; update the tag on your site |
| Downloaded icon is blurry | You picked a 16x16 or 32x32 file and scaled it up | Download the largest icon: 512x512 manifest, apple-touch-icon or SVG |
| Google preview shows a globe | Google has no favicon on file for that domain | Normal for new or small sites; follow Google’s guidelines and wait for a recrawl |
| Google preview differs from the site’s icon | Google’s copy is older than the site’s current file | Wait for Google to recrawl, or use the site’s own icons listed above |
| Your new favicon doesn’t appear | Browser or CDN cache | Hard reload the icon file, rename it, purge the CDN |
| iPhone home screen shows a screenshot, not an icon | No apple-touch-icon declared |
Add a 180x180 PNG with rel="apple-touch-icon" |
| Transparent icon has a black or white background on iOS | iOS fills transparency on touch icons | Give the apple-touch-icon a solid background |
| Rate-limited message | Too many lookups in a short time | Wait a minute and try again |
Free favicon grabber alternatives compared
A favicon grabber can be anything from a single Google URL to a browser extension. Each has a place, and it helps to know where each one wins.
| Method | Finds every size | Original file | Works when site blocks bots | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| This favicon downloader | Yes (tags, manifest, /favicon.ico) | Yes | Partly (Google preview fallback) | Seeing and saving a site’s full icon set |
| View source / DevTools | Yes | Yes | Yes (you’re a real browser) | Checking one site by hand, debugging your own |
| Google s2 favicons URL | No, one resized image | No, Google’s copy | Yes | Quick icons in apps and dashboards |
DuckDuckGo icon service (icons.duckduckgo.com/ip3/<domain>.ico) |
No, one image | Cached copy | Yes | Another quick fallback |
| Favicon generator sites | Not a grabber; they create icons | n/a | n/a | Making a favicon set for your own site |
| Browser extensions | Varies | Varies | Yes | Grabbing icons from pages you’re already on |
Where others are better. View source is more reliable for sites that block automated requests or insert icons with JavaScript, because your own browser runs the page fully. The Google s2 URL is simpler when you just need a small icon in a list of links and don’t care about the original file. And if you’re creating a favicon from your logo, a favicon generator is the right tool, not a downloader.
Where this tool is better. It lists every declared icon in one place, reads the manifest you’d otherwise have to open by hand, shows real rendered sizes instead of claimed ones, flags broken icon links, and downloads original files, including all of them in one .zip. It works in any browser, including on a phone where view source and DevTools are awkward.
About the Google s2 favicon URL
The address https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=example.com&sz=64 is an undocumented Google service. It returns the icon Google has cached for a domain, resized to the sz you ask for, and currently redirects to a gstatic.com/faviconV2 address. Because it’s not an official API, Google can change it at any time, and it returns a generic globe when it has no icon. This page shows it at 16, 32, 64 and 128 pixels as a preview, not as the main result.
Website favicon download: common workflows
A website favicon download fits into a few recurring jobs. Here’s how to handle each one well.
Download favicon ICO files for an old system
Some older systems, intranet tools and desktop shortcuts only accept .ico files. To download favicon ICO files, look for the row labelled “Default /favicon.ico” or any icon marked ICO. The download keeps every size embedded in the file. If the site has no .ico, download the largest PNG and convert it with an image editor or converter that writes multi-size ICO files.
Build a start page, dashboard or link list
For a personal start page, a Notion page or an internal dashboard, you want consistent icons. Download the 180x180 apple-touch-icon or a manifest icon for each site; they’re large enough to scale down cleanly and usually have solid backgrounds. If you’re turning a list of links into bookmarks at the same time, the URL list to bookmarks converter builds an importable bookmarks file from plain URLs.
Audit your own site’s icons
Run your domain through the tool after every redesign. Check that the ICO, SVG, apple-touch and manifest icons all load, that their real sizes match their sizes attributes, and that there are no leftover tags pointing at deleted files. Then check the Google preview to see what search results show.
Recover the icon of a site that’s gone
If a site is down or has closed, no live lookup can read it. Try the Google preview first, since Google may still have the icon cached. Otherwise, open the site in the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, pick a snapshot, and add /favicon.ico to the archived address. To check many old links at once, the bulk Wayback Machine checker shows which ones have archived copies.
Inspect a suspicious link before you trust its icon
A familiar favicon proves nothing about a site. Anyone can copy a bank’s or a brand’s icon, which is one reason phishing pages look convincing in a tab. If you’re checking a short link, run it through the URL expander to see where it really goes before you open it.
Can I use a favicon I downloaded?
You can download a favicon freely, but reusing it depends on what you do with it. Viewing a site’s icon, using it as a shortcut or bookmark icon on your own device, or showing it next to a link to that site is how favicons are meant to work, and it’s what browsers, search engines and link-preview tools do every day.
Using the icon as part of your own product is different. Most favicons are logos, and logos are usually protected by trademark and often by copyright. That stays true even though the file is publicly reachable. Putting another company’s logo on your app, in an ad, or in anything that suggests an endorsement can get you into trouble. Many companies publish brand guidelines or press kits that explain what’s allowed; check those before using an icon beyond a simple link.
Favicons and your bookmarks
Favicons are also how most people scan their bookmarks. On the Chrome bookmarks bar, many people keep icon-only bookmarks with no title at all, as described in our guide to the Chrome bookmarks bar. When a favicon disappears and turns into a grey globe, it can mean the browser never cached it, but it can also mean the page has moved, died or been replaced by a parked domain.
Bookmend helps with that side of things. It’s an AI-native bookmark manager for Chrome and the web: when you save a page, it reads it, writes a short summary and suggests tags and a collection, and it keeps the readable text so the content stays available if the site changes. You can later ask your library questions in plain language and get answers with citations to your saved pages. On Premium, which is free for new accounts during early access, link health checks saved links in the background at most once a day, flags dead ones and offers the Wayback Machine snapshot closest to when the page last worked. The free plan covers saving, collections, tags, search, and importing a bookmarks.html file from any browser. See what Bookmend does and how it works.
If you only want to look inside an old bookmarks export, the bookmarks HTML viewer opens any bookmarks.html file with search and a folder tree, right in your browser.
Written by Nafiul Hasan, Founder, Bookmend. Last updated.