iPadOS 15.2.1 Safari - Broken Favicons

[Jim Lahey]

Hello. Does anyone else have broken favicons in iPadOS 15 Safari tabs? Very often my tabs are showing completely the wrong icon. Along with the My First Sidebar, Safari these days is a total embarrassment. Might start using betas in the hope of improved stability 🤔

 

[Slartibart]

No problem with the favicons here. iPadOS 15.2.1, 2020 iPad, iPP, 221 iPP. Try to clear history and website data in the Safari Preferences.

 

[Jim Lahey]

No problem with the favicons here. iPadOS 15.2.1, 2020 iPad, iPP, 221 iPP. Try to clear history and website data in the Safari Preferences.

Yeah tried that. Still randomly swapping the icons for others. First world problem but surprisingly irritating. Especially as you can now no longer disable them. Apple in 2022 🙄

 

[dave14305]

I experience this swapping on a few sites, but they all end up using the same wrong icon.

 

[Jim Lahey]

I experience this swapping on a few sites, but they all end up using the same wrong icon.

Ah thanks for the response. I was getting close to wiping the iPad and starting again but if others are experiencing the same problem then it’s probably just another bug that they will never fix. Not exactly the end of the world but I’m a bit OCD about stuff like this so I find it unreasonably irritating. If it annoys me enough I’ll probably try a Reset All Settings but I am not confident it will fix anything. All the more annoying that you used to be able to disable them. Yet another change Apple have made that broke something. Safari is fast becoming a dog’s dinner. Some of their design choices are unfathomable at times. Remove the ability to remove the favicons and then break the favicons while you’re doing it. Amazing 😵‍💫

 

[dave14305]

The topper for me is that it thinks they’re all Fox News. 🙂

 

[MilaM]

I have the same problem with favicons in Safari on iOS as well as on macOS. It's a quite old bug and was present at least since iOS 14 if not earlier. Clearing caches does not help as far as I know. It's not a problem of the respective websites. The same show with correct icons in Firefox.

It's just one of the numerous Safari bugs/annoyances that you just have to live with.

I also think it's very irritating.

 

[Jim Lahey]

Still broken in iPadOS 15.5. Apple have totally lost their mojo.

 

[hello_lemon]

I have finally found a way to manually refresh the favicons in Safari on the iPad! I set the date on my iPad to about a month in the future, then went to Safari settings and cleared the website data for the site with the misassigned favicon. After revisiting the site, the correct favicon was displayed. I then set the date on my iPad back to normal.

Just deleting the website data alone (or Safari’s entire cache) didn’t fix the issue for me—I needed to also set the date to the future. I presume there’s a favicon cache which doesn’t get deleted when clearing the browser cache, and that the favicon cache only gets refreshed after a timeout. Setting the date to the future presumably forces this.

Apple really shows how little they care for the web, with bugs like this… let alone that favicons get misassigned in the first place!

 

[snail22]

I have finally found a way to manually refresh the favicons in Safari on the iPad! I set the date on my iPad to about a month in the future, then went to Safari settings and cleared the website data for the site with the misassigned favicon. After revisiting the site, the correct favicon was displayed. I then set the date on my iPad back to normal.

Just deleting the website data alone (or Safari’s entire cache) didn’t fix the issue for me—I needed to also set the date to the future. I presume there’s a favicon cache which doesn’t get deleted when clearing the browser cache, and that the favicon cache only gets refreshed after a timeout. Setting the date to the future presumably forces this.

Apple really shows how little they care for the web, with bugs like this… let alone that favicons get misassigned in the first place!

I was really hoping this would work for me but it didn’t

In my case, Safari on my iPad mini has decided to permanently use the DuckDuckGo icon for YouTube. Same thing happened about a year ago and I could only fix it with a factory reset of my iPad. Now it’s happened again and I really don’t want to do another reset so I guess I’ll live with it.

I don’t suppose there’s any way to completely remove and reinstall just the Safari app?

 

[MilaM]

I don’t suppose there’s any way to completely remove and reinstall just the Safari app?

It should be possible in the EU, but I'm not sure if all settings and caches will be also deleted like it is the case with regular apps.

I have the same problem with some sites and could not find a solution to fix the favicons. I have the same problem on iPad as well as on iPhone.

 

[hello_lemon]

I have finally found a way to manually refresh the favicons in Safari on the iPad! I set the date on my iPad to about a month in the future, then went to Safari settings and cleared the website data for the site with the misassigned favicon. After revisiting the site, the correct favicon was displayed. I then set the date on my iPad back to normal.

Just deleting the website data alone (or Safari’s entire cache) didn’t fix the issue for me—I needed to also set the date to the future. I presume there’s a favicon cache which doesn’t get deleted when clearing the browser cache, and that the favicon cache only gets refreshed after a timeout. Setting the date to the future presumably forces this.

Apple really shows how little they care for the web, with bugs like this… let alone that favicons get misassigned in the first place!

This fix is still working for me. To clarify, I recommend setting the date to two months in the future. If it’s not exactly more than a month in future, it seems like the favicon cache isn’t reset. Setting it to two months in the future avoids this issue.

This is still only a ”symptom management” fix, however; it doesn’t prevent the bug occurring again. It actually happens so often for me that I‘ve given up fixing it every time it happens.