Favicons are the immensely useful little icon images that give you a quick visual cue as to the sites currently being displayed in your open tabs or bookmarks bar. To speed things up, Google Chrome obviously caches these favicons, given the fact that these almost never ever change. However, if you do want to ensure that you have the latest and greatest favicons employed by your favourite sites, then here is a foolproof (because yes, sometimes force refresh doesn’t actually refresh eveything!) technique to refresh your favicons in Google Chrome:
- Close Chrome
- Open your User Data folder
- Delete the ‘Favicons’ file
- Run Chrome
So basically now when you visit a site, Google will be forced to download the favicon because it no longer has it stored. Nice and simple, plus very effective.
If you don’t know where to find your User Data folder, here is a helpful list:
Windows XP
Google Chrome: C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default Chromium: C:\Documents and Settings\%USERNAME%\Local Settings\Application Data\Chromium\User Data\Default
Windows 7 or Vista
Google Chrome: C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default Chromium: C:\Users\%USERNAME%\AppData\Local\Chromium\User Data\Default
Mac OS X
Google Chrome: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default Chromium: ~/Library/Application Support/Chromium/Default
Linux
Google Chrome: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default Chromium: ~/.config/chromium/Default
Chrome OS
/home/chronos/
Done.