Favicon downloader

Download favicon from website declarations, not from one guessed filename

A favicon is often described as /favicon.ico, but modern pages can publish several icon families. A normal rel="icon" link can point to PNG, SVG, ICO or another supported format and can carry several size hints. Apple Home Screen icons use a separate relation. Safari mask icons carry a color. Installed web apps can choose icons from a linked manifest and mark them for ordinary, maskable or monochrome use.

This downloader begins with those declarations. Its bookmarklet runs in the website tab you already opened, inventories the current document and reads a linked web manifest when that page context is allowed to do so. It adds the conventional root ICO only when the document has no regular icon declaration. It does not crawl links, try a dictionary of filenames or pretend that a guessed 200 response is part of the page’s published icon set.

The source tab can read files that a remote URL form cannot

Browsers isolate origins. A standalone downloader page does not inherit another site’s cookies, service worker, staging authentication or same-origin permission. A favicon may be plainly visible in the tab while JavaScript on an unrelated origin is forbidden to inspect its bytes. Sending the URL through a server would create a proxy, an SSRF boundary and a different network identity from the one that actually loaded the page.

The collector instead fetches icon candidates in the source page’s browser context. It includes same-origin credentials only for same-origin resources and embeds at most 5 MB per icon and 8 MB for the collection. The versioned manifest moves directly between the tabs in origin-bound chunks, with downloaded JSON as a fallback. If a file was not readable there, this page can make one credential-free, no-referrer request during explicit analysis and records failure rather than silently dropping the URL.

Declared size, actual size and ICO contents are separate facts

A link or manifest sizes value is an author hint. It can be missing, say any for a scalable icon, list several dimensions or simply disagree with the returned file. The analysis therefore decodes the bytes and reports actual dimensions next to every declared value. PNG, JPEG, GIF, WebP and AVIF are recognized from their signatures; SVG must begin as actual SVG markup rather than merely claiming an image MIME type.

ICO needs an extra step because it is a container. Its directory can hold separate 16, 32, 48 and 256 pixel entries, sometimes with deliberately simplified small artwork. The receipt lists every valid directory size and uses the largest entry only for the card preview. If you need to create a new multi-size file instead of preserving an existing one, use the PNG to ICO converter. For a full new web package with Apple, manifest and maskable files, use the favicon generator; both are the opposite job from this route.

Duplicate bytes remain one file without losing declaration evidence

Sites commonly repeat one icon URL in several link elements, or serve identical bytes from a cache-busted filename and a manifest path. URL duplicates merge while the collection is parsed. After decoding, SHA-256 groups byte-identical files. The selectable card becomes one download, but the CSV and JSON receipts retain each URL, source type, declared size, purpose, media query and source page that led to it.

This matters when the file is being preserved for a redesign or migration. The image alone cannot tell you whether it was intended for a browser tab, Apple Home Screen, pinned mask, Windows tile or installed web app. Provenance is kept beside the bytes so a future decision does not have to be reconstructed from a folder of anonymous squares.

The favicon downloader waits for verification before selection

Every successfully decoded icon gets an individual download button. Checkboxes control the ZIP, so you can omit obsolete sizes or platform-specific artwork without losing the audit trail. The archive contains only selected files plus complete CSV and JSON receipts. Failed HTTP, CORS, authentication, signature and decode rows stay in those receipts even though there is no file to pack.

Downloadability is not a license and it is not a compatibility verdict. Logos and app icons can be protected by copyright or trademark. A browser may prefer one declaration over another, Apple treats its Home Screen surface separately, and a search crawler sees the site from a different session. The tool reports observable evidence; it does not claim that a particular user agent selected, cached or indexed an icon.

The receipt shows where favicon discovery stopped

A loaded web manifest can contribute several icon resources with type, sizes and purpose. An HTTP error, invalid JSON or a cross-origin permission failure is shown as the manifest status rather than converted into “no manifest icons”. The current W3C manifest model treats icon sizes as hints and defines any, maskable and monochrome purposes. The downloader preserves those tokens instead of scoring them as universally good or bad.

Apple Touch Icon is likewise shown as its own source, following Apple’s separate Web Clip mechanism. The favicon checker turns the same evidence into explicit browser, Search, Apple and installed-app rules. This page stays narrower: find real published icon files, inspect what they are, choose them and save them with an honest manifest.