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Troubleshooting

Why Is My Favicon Not Showing? 12 Fixes

By Alex Rivera, Web Developer Published: July 30, 2026 Updated: August 5, 2026 7 min read

TL;DR

If your favicon won't show, the cause is almost always browser caching, a wrong file path or a 404. Hard-refresh the page, open the favicon URL directly to confirm it loads, and use a square PNG/ICO linked with a correct <link rel="icon"> tag.

A favicon that won't appear is one of the most common — and most annoying — website issues. The good news: nearly every cause is quick to diagnose and fix. Work through these twelve fixes in order.

1. Your browser is caching the old icon

This is the cause in roughly half of all cases. Browsers cache favicons very aggressively, sometimes for days. Do a hard refresh (Ctrl+Shift+R on Windows/Linux, Cmd+Shift+R on Mac), or open the page in a private/incognito window to bypass the cache.

To confirm it's caching, open your favicon URL directly — https://yoursite.com/favicon.ico. If the new icon loads there, your browser was the problem.

2. The file path is wrong

Double-check the href in your link tag. A path like href="/favicon.ico" points at the domain root; if the file lives in a subfolder or subdirectory, the path must match, e.g. href="/images/favicon.ico". Typos and case sensitivity (on Linux hosts especially) are common culprits.

3. The file returns a 404

If the favicon file isn't actually on the server, nothing will render. Open the favicon URL directly in your browser and look for a 404. On WordPress or a CMS, plugins and themes sometimes block direct file access — check with your host if a file you uploaded can't be reached.

4. The link tag is missing or malformed

Make sure the favicon <link> tags are inside the <head> (not the body) and that quotes and the closing > are intact. A common mistake is pasting tags into a WordPress page body instead of header.php.

5. You used an unsupported format

Old browsers and some platforms ignore PNG favicons and want ICO. Conversely, some tools generate malformed ICO files. Ship both: an ICO and a 16×16 and 32×32 PNG. Avoid JPG entirely — it has no transparency and renders poorly at small sizes.

6. The image is not square

Non-square images get cropped or letterboxed unpredictably. Start from a square source (the same width and height in pixels) and let the platform apply its own rounding. Our generator handles this for you.

7. Your favicon is being blocked by a CDN or caching plugin

Cloudflare, W3 Total Cache, WP Rocket and similar services may serve a stale copy of your favicon. Purge the CDN cache and your caching plugin, then hard-refresh. Some CDNs also ignore .ico files unless the MIME type is correct.

8. The MIME type is wrong

The server should serve image/x-icon for .ico and image/png for .png. A server configured with the wrong MIME type can make browsers refuse the file. On Apache, add AddType image/x-icon .ico to your .htaccess.

9. You changed favicons but see the old one

Browsers cache by URL. After changing your icon, add a cache-busting query string to the link: href="/favicon.ico?v=2". iOS home-screen icons and Windows tiles are especially slow to refresh — they may need a restart or a fresh bookmark.

10. The tag order matters (rarely)

When you link both an ICO and PNGs, list the ICO first and the PNGs after. Browsers pick the most specific match; a PNG with sizes="32x32" will win over a generic ICO on modern browsers. If the PNGs fail to load, the ICO still shows.

11. You're looking in the wrong place

Favicons show in tabs, bookmarks and history — but not always on every internal page in some CMS setups, and never in an incognito window that hasn't loaded the page. Also, iOS home-screen icons only appear when a site is added to the home screen, not in Safari's tab bar.

12. The favicon file is corrupted

Finally, re-generate your favicon set. A corrupted or half-uploaded file produces a broken or invisible icon. Most favicon generators validate their output; ours builds the ICO locally in your browser so there's no upload corruption risk.

Still not showing? A quick checklist

  1. Open https://yoursite.com/favicon.ico — does it load?
  2. Is the <link> tag inside <head>?
  3. Does the path in the tag match where the file is?
  4. Is the source image square and in PNG/ICO format?
  5. Have you purged browser, CDN and plugin caches?

If you're still stuck, ask us via the contact page — include your site URL and the direct URL of the favicon file.

Affiliate disclosure: some links in our guides point to third-party tools and services. If you make a purchase through them, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never affects our recommendations.

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