favicon checker

A favicon is a small file with a disproportionate effect on how a brand looks: it appears in the browser tab, the bookmark bar, the history list, the mobile home screen and, on mobile search results, next to your listing. Enter a URL above and the check verifies that the icon is actually reachable and served as an image, rather than merely declared.

Declared is not the same as working

The common failure is not a missing tag — it is a tag that points at a file which no longer exists, or one that returns a 404 HTML page with a 200 status, or an image served with a Content-Type the browser will not render. In each case the markup looks perfect in the source and the tab shows a blank page icon. This check follows the declaration to the file and reports what actually came back.

Why both the root file and the link tag matter

Browsers and crawlers do not agree on where to look. Some request /favicon.ico at the root regardless of what your HTML says; others use the declared link. Search engine crawlers may fetch the root path independently of the page. Serving both a root file and an explicit declaration covers every consumer, which is why the check treats them separately rather than accepting one as proof of the other.

Platform-specific variants

iOS uses apple-touch-icon for home screen bookmarks and ignores a standard favicon for that purpose, so a site added to a phone home screen without one shows a screenshot of the page instead of a logo. Android reads the web app manifest for its icons. A single 16-pixel ICO file covers the browser tab and nothing else. The practical minimum for a site that cares is an ICO or PNG at the root, a larger PNG declared in the HTML, and an apple-touch-icon.

After fixing it

Favicons are cached aggressively by browsers and refreshed on their own schedule by search engines, so a corrected icon will not appear immediately. Verify that the file loads at its URL directly, rather than judging by your own browser tab, which may be showing you a cached copy from months ago.