How do I force a favicon refresh?

favicon
Simon picture Simon · Feb 5, 2010 · Viewed 716.4k times · Source

I have a Grails application running locally using its own tomcat and I have just changed the favicon for a new one. Problem is that I can not see it in any browser. The old favicon shows up or I get no favicon at all, but not my new one. I do not think this is a Grails issue per se, more an issue with favicons.

What is supposed to happen with favicons? How are they supposed to work? I have numerous bookmarks in my browser which have the wrong icons and they never seem to get refreshed. How do I force the server/browser to stop caching them? It seems pretty silly to always cache them given they are normally only 16x16. Why not just upload them with every visit to the page? It is not exactly a huge overhead.

Answer

Mark picture Mark · Aug 19, 2011

To refresh your site's favicon you can force browsers to download a new version using the link tag and a querystring on your filename. This is especially helpful in production environments to make sure your users get the update. 

<link rel="icon" href="http://www.yoursite.com/favicon.ico?v=2" />

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