Forum Discussion
Favicons for bookmarks broken since Edge v149 update
🚨 Update: workaround for the favicon issue
After testing, it seems in Edge v149 if you have "browsing history" set to clear each time you exit Edge, this is what causes the favicons to not appear, and also for some existing bookmarks to lose theirs.
To check, go to Menu > Settings > Privacy, search and services > Clear browsing data > "Choose what to clear every time you close the browser" (or enter edge://settings/privacy/clearBrowsingData/clearOnClose in the URL bar, then hit enter to go straight there).
If "browsing history" is enabled there, turn it off (the dot should be on the left) and favicons should then start working. If not, you may need to either (1) close Edge, and delete your current "Favicons" and "Favicons-journal" files, then reboot or (2) create a new profile in Edge (which means having to export your passwords, bookmarks, saved addresses and save payment cards, then reimport them 😬).
Hopefully Microsoft can get this sorted, either by restoring the pre-v149 behaviour, or by adding a new "keep favicons when clearing browsing history" option, as currently the workaround means having to keep your browsing history recorded. However, you can clear this (from the Edge menu, click "Clear browsing data" and then set time-range to "All time" and make sure "Browsing history" is checked; it's up to you if you wish to check any other options there), and from my testing, the favicons do not disappear. It is only if you ask Edge to clear the browsing history when you exit the browser that causes the issue.
💡 To find where your Edge profile is located, type edge://profile-internals/ in the URL bar, then press ENTER. Then click on the "Default" or "Profile 1" heading, then look next to "Profile path". In that folder is where you should find the "favicons" and "favicons-journal" files you can delete. Make sure Edge is fully-closed first, and I'd also suggest doing a reboot after deleting them.
💡 If you have more than one profile, tap the profile icon in the top-right to see which you're currently using.
This makes sense. After they all disappeared the other day, they began to come back after I opened a saved website. Last night I needed to do a reimage of the OS drive so I closed Edge and all other apps. this morning all the favicons were gone again. I had Edge clear history on shutdown. I turned that off as above and the icons that were populated yesterday reappeared. Go figure.
I have already created a new profile and tried deleting the favicons and favicon-journal files, neither of those options work from my testing. I do have "clear browsing history on exit" enabled and changing that so far seems to be the culprit (great find), will need some time to test as before I would get icons for a majority then after opening a few tabs, over time they would slowly start disappearing, but so far looks promising.
Sad they cannot even introduce a new semi-useless feature (show icon only) without breaking something, I guess QA is a thing of the past and we are all just beta testers now.
Update: After 4 hours of solid usage no icons have disappeared, I did have to visit some sites again to repair the icons (YouTube, Amazon) but so far they all are sticking, so it does look like the clear browsing history on close is the cause.
Again, thanks to dftf-wip for all your testing and updating of the issue it is greatly appreciated.
Edit: Updated
I've learned a long time ago (this includes Intel too) that Microsoft does these mess ups...
They don't tell anyone
People (including me) go crazy trying to fix something on their machine that IS NOT BROKEN.
People (including me) just make things worse.
Someone finally on a chat board comes up with a temporary fix.
People keep posting insane fixes that rarely work.
Finally after days/weeks/never Windows tells us it is a "known" issue and they will fix it - sooner or later
- but we never known when.
dftf posted to just turn off Clear Browsing on close. after a close and reboot edge - THAT WORKS.
imo JUST DO THAT and wait for Microsoft to fix edge.
UGH
