Safari 18 also missing FavIcons.

Team,

I was excited to announce that I thought I had found a way to recover my FavIcons. Unfortunately, after quitting Safari again, 60% of the FavIcons were lost. When I replaced the folder, I lost the remaining 30%.

Please disregard my previous comments regarding the workaround, as it didn’t work as expected and is misleading. I’m not sure how to delete my post.

I’m giving up on trying to recover the FavIcons and will rely on descriptions to narrow my searches for now. Hopefully, this issue will be resolved, and I can try to recover the FavIcons in the future.

Dear Rusty,

Thank you for your comments. So far, I haven’t encountered any further issues, as I haven’t restarted the computer, which sometimes resolves the FavIcon problem. By using only the privacy window, I avoid creating unwanted files.

My procedure is to send new bookmarks to a specific folder, then later open a personal window to save the FavIcon. In case I lose all my FavIcons, I simply restore them from TimeMachine, and everything returns to normal.

I wouldn’t need to do any of this if it weren’t for my preference to keep my bookmarks organized. They have become my product search library, and I now have over 800 saved bookmarks.

Again, thank you for your tip. I will give it a try when I run into issues and let you know how it goes.

I’d also like to share another tip:

To organize all of these bookmarks, I use emojis. It helps me quickly find the folder I’m looking for, and I find it very useful. Hope it helps others

Team,

I’ve also noticed that I have a duplicate “Tab Group Favorites” that doesn’t contain any web page addresses, and I’m unable to delete it. I’m not sure if this is related to the FavIcon issue, but it’s equally frustrating.

I would still like to resolve the FavIcon issue, as seeing the icons would make things much easier. Currently, I’m using the following workaround: When searching for a product, I navigate through the folders, which are organized by MasterFormat codes. The challenge is identifying the specific webpage I need. To narrow the search, I double-click the corresponding folder to view the webpage description before finding the right one.

If anyone has suggestions or solutions for either issue, it would be greatly appreciated.

Team,

I’ve noticed that the FavIcon issue doesn’t only occur when I “QUIT” Safari, but also when I “CLEAN” the cache, which I expected might be the case. My goal was to collect all the FavIcons, then back up the folder for safekeeping, so I could easily replace it when needed after frequent browsing sessions.

However, this approach hasn’t worked as planned, and I’m still losing all the FavIcons after clearing the cache. Is there a better method to preserve FavIcons or restore them after clearing the cache?

But once I quit they are all gone AGAIN.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Team,

I’ve found a temporary workaround for the FavIcon issue, though I still believe there’s a bug in Safari 18. Here’s what I did:

1. Deleted the FavIcon folder from the “Library > Safari” directory.

2. Took the time to revisit each of the hundreds of pages in my Bookmarks.

3. Exported a duplicate of the FavIcon folder and saved it to my hard drive.

Once this bug is resolved, I’ll replace the current folder with the backup in the Library folder. For now, when I clean the history, I lose about 30% of the icons but not all of them. Hopefully, restoring the folder later will bring back all the icons.

I’m not sure if this solution will be helpful to others, but I hope Apple resolves the issue soon.

Additionally, I still haven’t been able to delete one of the Tab Group folders—it cannot be renamed or deleted. If anyone has suggestions, please share!

Rusty,

Thank you for your input. I experimented with your previous suggestion and, even after quitting Safari, I didn’t lose my FavIcons, which is great news! However, I still haven’t been able to identify the exact file that stores this information. It seems to be a collection of files. For now, I am backing up the entire FavIcon folder for safekeeping and using Time Machine to restore it if necessary.

Fortunately, I’ve only noticed a couple of missing FavIcons, which might have been caused by adding bookmarks in a "PRIVATE" window rather than a "PERSONAL" one.

Once more thank for your input. I will let you know when I understand what is causing the issue and the best solution.

Kpkoski:

I have not found a solution. However, this is an update on my procedure to save my FavIcons. As mentioned before, FavIcons are very useful to me. I have over 900 bookmarks of web pages organized in the MasterFormat for architectural and construction products from manufacturers. Searching for them is very difficult without a folder information option, where the FavIcons help me with selection.

I am not sure if Apple has fixed the problem, or if it has resolved on my end. I tried shutting down the computer and restarting it to report that this step does not delete my FavIcons. I still have them.

At this time, I am using a program called Folder Synchronizer to back up the full content of the Library > Safari folder just in case, since Time Machine backs it up only once a day. This way, I can manually back up this file before I quit the computer.

To avoid cluttering the computer with bookmarks, I am using a private window instead of a personal window.

This is not a solution, but rather a workaround. I suspect that I do not need to back up the entire content of the FavIcon folder, just the Library > Safari > FavIcon Cache folder. However, I prefer to take the extra precaution.

If anyone has another tip, please share. Hopefully Apple will come out with a solution/suggestion soon.