Firefox does not sync bookmark icons because that's a lot of pointless (and potentially outdated) data to sync. Instead, Firefox will save the bookmark icon the first time that you visit the website.

If you want to leave feedback for Firefox developers, you can go to the Firefox Help menu and select Submit Feedback... or use this link. Your feedback gets collected by a team of people who read it and gather data about the most common issues.

That's definitely NOT pointless. It's the feature that Google chrome, new Microsoft Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, and many other browsers have.

i tested Firefox 8 years ago and it still didn't have this super basic feature. now after 8 years i tested it again and still missing. I don't understand how hard it is to implement.

See:

• Bug 428378 - Synced tabs, bookmarks, and history entries don't have a favicon until the user re-visits that page again

(please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)

It's not necessarily that it's hard to implement, it's that it makes a lot more data to sync. If you want to transfer favicons, you are talking about more than tripling the size of the data that's being synced. That makes the Firefox Sync process take longer and increases the overhead for both the Firefox Sync servers and your own network internet. All this for non-essential data. It's data that can simply be rebuilt later.

cor-el said

See:

• Bug 428378 - Synced tabs, bookmarks, and history entries don't have a favicon until the user re-visits that page again

(please do not comment in bug reports
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/page.cgi?id=etiquette.html)

I know, that's why it needs to change. Chromium browsers don't suffer from this problem.

Wesley Branton said

It's not necessarily that it's hard to implement, it's that it makes a lot more data to sync. If you want to transfer favicons, you are talking about more than tripling the size of the data that's being synced. That makes the Firefox Sync process take longer and increases the overhead for both the Firefox Sync servers and your own network internet. All this for non-essential data. It's data that can simply be rebuilt later.

That's not true. Again as i mentioned earlier, other browsers can easily handle that. in just few seconds.

Hi Jason, I've passed on your feedback. As cor-el cited, including favicons to sync is part of a list of future enhancements. Currently, there is no date set for when when this will be added, and I'm not sure there is a workaround until then.

I've passed on your feedback, so the product team is aware that this this is important to you. If you have any followup questions, please let us know.

Chris Ilias said

Hi Jason, I've passed on your feedback. As cor-el cited, including favicons to sync is part of a list of future enhancements. Currently, there is no date set for when when this will be added, and I'm not sure there is a workaround until then. I've passed on your feedback, so the product team is aware that this this is important to you. If you have any followup questions, please let us know.

Hi, thank you very much, appreciate it.

as an open source and community driven / centric browser, i really hope Firefox developers implement this feature sooner rather than later. waited years for this.

Have a nice holidays!

I still do not understand why some of my toolbar bookmarks do not have icons while most do. Opening the sites does not bring up the icon in the toolbar although the icons show on the tab. What is it about the sites without icons that prevents them putting the icons into the toolbar? Before anyone says that icons are too trivial to warrant consideration, please note that almost all of the icons which appear are instantly reconisable to me and no text is required to identify them. Text takes up valuable space which is limited because the toolbar cannot occupy more than one line and I have a lot of routine and necessary bookmarks which I need to display in the toolbar.

Can you post the link of a website that causes this issue ?

A website may offer icons in various dimensions and there might not be a favicon that Firefox things is suitable for the Bookmarks Toolbar.

This can be caused by a problem with the favicons.sqlite that stores favicon data.

If you use Sync then best is to disconnect Sync temporarily during troubleshooting.

You can check for problems with the places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder.

• use "Verify Integrity" button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page

If errors are reported with "Verify Integrity", close and restart Firefox and retry.

If "Verify Integrity" cannot repair places.sqlite, rename/remove all places.sqlite and favicons.sqlite files in the Firefox profile folder. Firefox will rebuild places.sqlite and restore the bookmarks from a recent JSON backup in the bookmarkbackups folder.

• keep a backup copy of places.sqlite in case a new places.sqlite database has to be created

Note that you lose history when you rename places.sqlite.

See also:

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/Bookmarks+not+saved#w_fix-the-bookmarks-file
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/fix-bookmarks-and-history-will-not-be-functional

You can use the button on the "Help -> Troubleshooting Information" (about:support) page to go to the current Firefox profile folder or use the about:profiles page.

• Help -> Troubleshooting Information -> Profile Folder/Directory:
  Windows: Open Folder; Linux: Open Directory; Mac: Show in Finder
• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profiles-where-firefox-stores-user-data

Here is a link to one of the sites which will not display a bookmark toolbar icon:

https://systmonline.tpp-uk.com/2/Login

Interestingly, it did do so for years and only stopped when I re-installed Firefox recently. This applies to the other sites as well.

Hi David.

I'm not getting a favicon on the bookmark as well in the current Firefox release for this website. I see the favicon in Firefox 71. I don't know what is causing this change, but the file is a Windows BMP image.

• https://systmonline.tpp-uk.com/2/favicon.ico

Update: Without my knowingly doing anything, a lot of icons in the bookmark toolbar, which I had lost when I deleted and re-installed Firefox, returned. Most did not have their own icons but most of these developed their own when the page was opened. However not all did, so now I have recovered all my lost bookmarks but have more without their own icons than yesterday. None of this advances any understanding as to why bookmarks which previously loaded their own icons now do not.

The issue with systmonline.tpp-uk might be related to the fact that the website redirects and adds a date GET parameter to the URL, so with each visit you get a new URL and you will never see a blue highlighted favicon and Firefox can't confirm that the URL has been visited. I don't know if anything has changed with checking for a favicon.

You can consider to file a bug report for this issue to see if this regression can be fixed.

Thanks for your looking at this problem. I suppose if some sites have stopped downloading their icons it can either be a change in the latest Firefox version or something changed on my computer.

While I have been typing this reply I noticed that the spell checker wasn't working despite the fact that it is selected in "options". So maybe there is some change in the set-up on my machine which inhibits some functions under certain circumstances.

I will make a bug report so that Mozilla can see the existance of the problem and hope that if it is widespread, other will report it and that will trigger its rectification.

You can see which dictionary is selected if you right-click in a text area and open the Languages sub menu. At least one dictionary should be installed and have a check mark to indicate that it is selected.

• open the "Add Dictionaries" link to install a dictionary if you do not have one.

The spelling checker is enabled if [X] "Check Spelling" in the right-click context menu has a checkmark.

You can look here for dictionaries:

• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/language-tools/

Note that for spell check you need a dictionary. A language pack provides string translations for the user interface.

• https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-firefox-interface-other-languages-language-pack

Thanks. Yes it was a dictionary problem The dictionary was removed when I deleted Firefox and re-installed it. Now I have a new dictionary, all is functioning as it should.