Add Your Website Icon to the Browser Tab

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The little icon that shows up in each web page’s browser tab is called a “favicon”.  Adding this tiny detail really gives your website a professional appearance in the browser.  Here’s how to do it.

favicons
Favicons in a browser

If You’re Using WordPress…

WordPress provides a way to specify the favicon. Log into your site and go to Appearance -> Customize.

Then click on Site Identity and click on the logo area. There, you can specify an image to be your logo.

WordPress recommends it be at least 250px by 250px wide because it also uses it as your iOS button logo. Just keep in mind that it will be shrunken down to 16px by 16px in the browser tab.

If the logo is not square, WordPress will let you crop it right in the admin.

After you specify the image, save, and you’re done!

If You Have FTP Access to Your Site…

Alternatively, if you’re not using WordPress and you are able to FTP to your server, you can place your favicon image in the root and add one line of code to the <head> portion of the pages to specify it.

You’ll need to generate the artwork.  Keep in mind that it will be reduced to a 16 x 16-pixel square, so it can’t be too detailed.  To allow for higher resolutions in the future, I generate it as a 32 x 32-pixel image.  The browser will reduce it as needed.  Create your icon and save it as a .png file, then FTP it up to the root of your site.

Add the Head Code

Since I wrote this article in 2012, the browser makers have standardized and now you just need one snippet of code and one icon file type. The following piece of code in the <head> section of your site will work for the latest versions of all major browsers now:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/your_favicon.png" type="image/x-icon" />

Substitute the path to your 32 by 32 pixel.png image path inside the href.

One Important Caveat

Note that all browsers employ caching when it comes to images, including the icon image.  So, when you’re testing this you’ll need to clear your browser cache whenever you change the icon.

Hope this helps! – Brian

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47 thoughts on “Add Your Website Icon to the Browser Tab”

  2. Thanks for this helpful post! I always struggled with adding a favicon, but your explanation makes it so straightforward. This will definitely improve my site’s branding.

    Reply

  3. Is there a way to change the browser tab icon for a website that I am visiting (i.e not my website)? I regularly visit two websites that display the same icon, and it is confusing, so I’d like a way to tell my browser to substitute one of them with something else. Can it be done?

    Reply

  5. so using this code in Dreamweaver it doesn’t show up when doing the preview in browser. Will it only work when it is uploaded to the server?

    Reply

  7. Hi,

    I am adding custom image when I get session time out to web browser tab using $(“link[rel*=’icon’]”).attr(“href”, “/test/images/iamIconError.png”);

    when I click on OK button it should restore the default web browser icon but it is not working.
    I am using $(“link[rel*=’icon’]”).attr(“href”, “”);

    Could you please tell me the fix?

    When I click on clear browser history it is working.

    Reply

  8. I’m a total novice when it comes to HTML. If I don’t have the icon stored on a website, but rather on my desktop, can I just substitute the file path name for the website?

    Reply

    • Hi John,

      Unfortunately, no. You have to upload that file from your computer to a server that is connected to the Internet. Usually that is done with an FTP program, or through your hosting provider’s website.

      Best,
      Brian

      Reply

  16. The 4th line seems to have an excess ‘>’ which caused an additional line with that character appearing on top of my header banner image. Deleted it and problem was fixed. Many thanks! this works for all current versions of chrome, firefox, and IE at the time of posting this comment. Also noticed .ico seems to work with IE now.

    Reply

  22. Hi, thanks for the tip! I have followed the instructions, and it works on all browsers I tested on, except for Chrome… Do you have any suggestions on how to troubleshoot?

    Reply

  23. Thanks, I am so unskilled in making websites and things around, but this really helped. A little attention was needed as the links for the images were a bit different and I have used two different images, one .png and the other .ico. Don’t know if it would work with both being .ico, but for me it does not matter. Thanks a lot!

    Reply

  24. I’m a little lost!
    I have copied my image, converted to .png AND .ico
    Do i copy the whole content of lines within the blue box above? and do i amend any details within?
    Thankyou

    Reply

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