Search Support

Avoid support scams. We will never ask you to call or text a phone number or share personal information. Please report suspicious activity using the “Report Abuse” option.

Learn More

How to use a website's favicon as the desktop shortcut icon on FF/windows?

  • 5 replies
  • 7 have this problem
  • 6 views
  • Last reply by cor-el

more options

I've seen related questions on this forum but none answer my question. I am a developer and the website I am working on is for kids and students. Previously, we gave instructions to parents and teachers that they could drag the favicon to the desktop to get a shortcut to the right page - and the shortcut icon was our favicon image (our logo). This made it easy for kids to find the right icon on their own. We now find that the dragged shortcut icon is the icon of the default browsers on that machine. I've seen suggestions for how I can change this on my own computer but I have not seen any way for me to fix this for my users - I am dealing with users that are busy and not technically-knowledgeable. I can't ask them to change their about:config settings or download the logo separately and right click to set the icon of the shortcut to the logo. These are not solutions for me. IE does this action automatically and Firefox used to do it automatically. Please help!

I've seen related questions on this forum but none answer my question. I am a developer and the website I am working on is for kids and students. Previously, we gave instructions to parents and teachers that they could drag the favicon to the desktop to get a shortcut to the right page - and the shortcut icon was our favicon image (our logo). This made it easy for kids to find the right icon on their own. We now find that the dragged shortcut icon is the icon of the default browsers on that machine. I've seen suggestions for how I can change this on my own computer but I have not seen any way for me to fix this for my users - I am dealing with users that are busy and not technically-knowledgeable. I can't ask them to change their about:config settings or download the logo separately and right click to set the icon of the shortcut to the logo. These are not solutions for me. IE does this action automatically and Firefox used to do it automatically. Please help!

All Replies (5)

more options

Try to toggle the browser.shell.shortcutFavicons on the about:config page.

more options

Sorry, that doesn't solve my problem. Please read the question more closely - I want my USERS to be able to do this without changing their configurations. My users are public school elementary teachers and parents. I can't ask them to toggle any settings - I'm looking for a way that my users can do this on their own. Thanks

more options

"we gave instructions to parents and teachers that they could drag the favicon to the desktop to get a shortcut to the right page - and the shortcut icon was our favicon image (our logo) "

You gave them false information. That is not a default feature, but it can be changed by each individual user.

more options

Okay, for a long time this was the default action - it was tested and worked for years. So I'm understanding that the default action has changed and there is no way to change it back from my end. Thanks for your information.

more options

If the default behavior has changed then you would have to revert this by flipping the pref or write an No Restart extension that does this and automatically uninstalls (similar to what SearchReset does).