How to prevent the browser from asking for the favicon?

html browser favicon
AngryHacker picture AngryHacker · Feb 1, 2011 · Viewed 13.1k times · Source

Is there some directive I could use in my HTML to tell the browser not to ask for the favicon?

Answer

Pekka picture Pekka · Feb 1, 2011

No, I don't think there is. From Wikipedia:

Most web browsers do not require any HTML to retrieve a favicon that conforms to the de facto file name and type (favicon.ico) located in the web site's root. If no favicon link is detected upon HTML page load completion and no previous site visits are recorded in the browser's history, a favicon.ico is requested automatically.[8]

The only thing you could do is explicitly point the browser to a different location (that for example could return a 204 no content) 

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.example.com/my_empty_resource" />

Related questions

HTML 5 Favicon - Support?

I was reading the Favicon page on Wikipedia. They mention the HTML 5 spec for Favicon: The current HTML5 specification recommends specifying size icons in multiple sizes using the attributes rel="icon" sizes="space-separated list of icon dimensions" within a tag. […

Read More
Correct MIME Type for favicon.ico?

According to the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA), all .ico file falls under the MIME type image/vnd.microsoft.icon. (Source) E.g. <link rel="icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" href="favicon.ico" /> However, savvy internet guru, …

Read More
Favicon not showing up

I placed my favicon here: http://www.vittoriosastarsnursery.com/favicon.ico But for some reason it doesn't want to show in Firefox. It did work in IE, but I'm more concerned about getting it working in Firefox.

Read More