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Firefox reverts favicons back to default

  • 3 replies
  • 4 have this problem
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  • Last reply by Morpheas

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Firefox, being frustrating as it always is, decided to (for some reason) break my custom favicons I had for both Google and Youtube.

I had 2 separate Userscripts installed, in order to change those 2 favicons, and they used to work. But now, those userscripts only change the favicons that are displayed on the open tabs, and not anywhere else. As soon as I load a bookmark, Firefox sets the favicon to the default, regardless of what is shown on the tab.

I was using Firefox 52.4.0 ESR until now, when I decided to move to Firefox latest version (56.0.2). In FF 52.4.0 those issues didnt exist.

But for some strange reason, FF 56 really doesnt like custom favicons.

How can I "force" Firefox to use the favicons that I see on the tabs? I have tried pretty much everything, and nothing seems to work. Tried some suggestions that I found in mozilla support, such as resetting all favicons from the Browser Console using a command. It reset them, but they still wont load properly. I've tried pretty much every add-on, userscript (both greasemonkey and Stylish) out there, but none of them fix this issue with FF 56.

Is there any way that I can have the favicons of my choice for Google and Youtube?

Firefox, being frustrating as it always is, decided to (for some reason) break my custom favicons I had for both Google and Youtube. I had 2 separate Userscripts installed, in order to change those 2 favicons, and they used to work. But now, those userscripts only change the favicons that are displayed on the open tabs, and not anywhere else. As soon as I load a bookmark, Firefox sets the favicon to the default, regardless of what is shown on the tab. I was using Firefox 52.4.0 ESR until now, when I decided to move to Firefox latest version (56.0.2). In FF 52.4.0 those issues didnt exist. But for some strange reason, FF 56 really doesnt like custom favicons. How can I "force" Firefox to use the favicons that I see on the tabs? I have tried pretty much everything, and nothing seems to work. Tried some suggestions that I found in mozilla support, such as resetting all favicons from the Browser Console using a command. It reset them, but they still wont load properly. I've tried pretty much every add-on, userscript (both greasemonkey and Stylish) out there, but none of them fix this issue with FF 56. Is there any way that I can have the favicons of my choice for Google and Youtube?

All Replies (3)

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Storage of bookmarks Favcions was changed in Firefox 55.0. Previously that data was stored with the bookmarks in the places.sqlite file. But the Favicon data was moved to a separate favicons.sqlite file, along with the addition of 2 Favicons temporary files that only exist while that Profile is being used - favicons.sqlite-wal and favicons.sqlite-shm are the temporary files involved. During the Firefox shutdown procedure the data in those two files are written to the favicons.sqlite file and the 2 temporary files are deleted. At least that is my understanding about how the Favicons storage system was modified.

Those Userscripts will need to be edited. Sorry, I have no idea what the editing might entail.

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Current Firefox release are trying to optimize the code for speed and that has lead to no longer using CSS (list-style-image) for showing the favicons in a lot of cases and now it is done via JavaScript and an image attribute (page-icon: prefix). This makes it impossible to override the favicon via CSS (userChrome.css).

Most default favicon images have been replaced by SVG images to speed up the rendering. See this thread about a way to color these SVG icons.

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cor-el said

Current Firefox release are trying to optimize the code for speed and that has lead to no longer using CSS (list-style-image) for showing the favicons in a lot of cases and now it is done via JavaScript and an image attribute (page-icon: prefix). This makes it impossible to override the favicon via CSS (userChrome.css). Most default favicon images have been replaced by SVG images to speed up the rendering. See this thread about a way to color these SVG icons.

I understand, and I noticed the SVG files when I was trying to edit the default icons for Home, History, and Bookmarks for the toolbar buttons. I was actually able to successfully get Firefox to use old toolbar.png files that I manually copied into Firefox's folder in Program Files for these icons, and they changed successfully. All this was done using Stylish, with my own custom userstyles.

I was also able to change a couple of bookmark folder icons, using the same method. First I edited userChrome.css, and then I ported that over to Stylish, not sure if those 2 methods would work, but they both worked.

The issue is specifically with bookmark favicons.

The closest I got to changing them, is by using a legacy add-on (non Webext of course) called Bookmark Favicon Images, and that add-on managed to change the bookmark favicons, but only for the specific bookmarks I selected, and only temporarily. For example, changing a certain youtube bookmark's icon worked, but then upon clicking that bookmark and loading the page, reverted the favicon back to the default, probably Firefox reading the favicon from the youtube servers, and updating it to change the bookmark's icon.

Now, reading the-edmeister's post above, I tried different versions of Firefox, to see what's what. Upon testing Firefox 55.0, the exact same thing happens, identical behaviour to Firefox 56.

On Firefox 54, this is where the favicons worked as I wanted them to. All I did is install those old userscripts, and they changed as they did back in 52.4.0 ESR. (I used portable versions of FF 54 and 55, but still, the results should be valid.)

But here's the problem: Firefox 56 is A LOT faster than 52.4.0 ESR. Testing with Speedometer 2.0, yielded 2x the performance of FF 52.4.0 ESR! FF 56.0.2 is simply twice as fast as FF 52.4.0 ESR. - Specifically, I achieved a score of 36.13 with FF 56, vs a measly 17.04 with 52 ESR. - And these tests were done using the exact same profile, copy-pasted from old Firefox. - Using a clean, brand new version of FF 56, the score is at roughly 43-44 (dont remember exact number). Tests were done using Speedometer 2.0-r221659.

So, to end this really long post, I realize that I can go back to FF 54 and get the functionality I want, but there's the issue of performance. Firefox keeps getting faster and faster with each new version, and I am not sure how much slower FF 54 really is. I guess I'll test it and find out.

I saw the thread you linked about grey bookmark folders, and I have the same "issue", but this isnt directly related to my issue. My issue is with website favicons, which arent entirely dependent on browser files, i.e. the website favicons are read from each website, not from some SVG files within Firefox's compressed .ja files.

TL;DR; Both of your replies are slightly helpful, but dont solve my issue. Is there any way that I can force Firefox to show the favicons I want without reverting them back to default every time I load a page??

Thank you for taking the time to read and reply, I appreciate it.