I don't have a favicon.ico, but my browser always makes a request for it.
Is it possible to prevent the browser from making a request for the favicon from my site? Maybe some META-TAG in the HTML header?
19 Answers
I believe I've seen this (I haven't tested it or used it personally though):
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="#" />
Anyone had similar experience?
EDIT:
I just tested the above snippet and on a forced full refresh, no favicon requests were seen in Fiddler. I tested against IE8 (Compat mode as IE7 standards) and FF 3.6.
The easiest way to block these temporarily for testing purposes is to open up the inspect page in chrome by right-clicking anywhere on the page and clicking inspect or by pressing Ctrl+Shift+j and then going to the networking tab and then reloading the page which will send all the requests your page is supposed to make including that annoying favicon.ico. You can now simply right click the favicon.ico request and click "Block request URL".
All of the above answers are for devs who control the app source code. If you are a sysadmin, who's figuring out load-balancer or proxying configuration and is annoyed by this favicon.ico shenanigans, this simple trick does a better job. This answer is for Chrome, but I think there should be a similar alternative which you would figure out for Firefox/Opera/Tor/any other browser :)
Put this into your HTML head:
<link rel="icon" href="data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAAEAAAABCAIAAACQd1PeAAAADElEQVQI12P4//8/AAX+Av7czFnnAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC">
This is a bit larger than the other answers, but does contain an actually valid PNG image (1x1 pixel white).
A very simple solution is put the below code in your .htaccess. I had the same issue and it solve my problem.
<IfModule mod_alias.c>
RedirectMatch 403 favicon.ico
</IfModule>
Reference: http://perishablepress.com/block-favicon-url-404-requests/
Elaborating on previous answers, this might be the shortest solution from the HTML file itself:
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="data:" />
Tested working, no error messages or failed requests on Chrome Version 94.0.4606.81
Just make it simple with :
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="#" type="image/x-icon">
It displays nothing!!!!
In Node.js,
res.writeHead(200, {'Content-Type': 'text/plain', 'Link': 'rel="shortcut icon" href="#"'} );
I need prevent request AND have icon displayed i.e. in Chrome.
Quick code to try in <head>:
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" sizes="16x16" href="data:image/png;base64,
iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAABAAAAAQBAMAAADt3eJSAAAAMFBMVEU0OkArMjhobHEoPUPFEBIu
O0L+AAC2FBZ2JyuNICOfGx7xAwTjCAlCNTvVDA1aLzQ3COjMAAAAVUlEQVQI12NgwAaCDSA0888G
CItjn0szWGBJTVoGSCjWs8TleQCQYV95evdxkFT8Kpe0PLDi5WfKd4LUsN5zS1sKFolt8bwAZrCa
GqNYJAgFDEpQAAAzmxafI4vZWwAAAABJRU5ErkJggg==" />
Sometimes this error comes, when HTML has some commented code and browser is trying to look for something. Like in my case I had commented code for a web form in flask and I was getting this.
After spending 2 hours I fixed it in the following ways:
1) I created a new python environment and then it threw an error on the commented HTML line, before this I was only thrown error 'GET /favicon.ico HTTP/1.1" 404'
2) Sometimes, when I had a duplicate code, like python file existing with the same name, then also I saw this error, try removing those too
If you are not using HTML and it's auto-generated by Flask or some frameworks you can always add a dummy route in the app to just return dummy text to fix this issue.
Or . . . you can just add the favicon :)
Eg for Python Flask Application.
@app.route('/favicon.ico')
def favicon():
return 'dummy', 200
I solved this problem by using the Content-Security-Policy HTTP response header. By using this, is possible to block the browser from making further media queries like images (other types are also possible). I added the following header to the response:
Content-Security-Policy: img-src 'none'
The problem is it will block ALL image queries. If your HTML has any image, they won't be loaded. In my case it was very likely a bug in Firefox because the browser was requesting the favicon.ico for a response whose Content-type is text/xml!
It also depends on the browser implementing this feature as is enforced on the client side.
Check https://content-security-policy.com for a complete guide on CSP.
Cheers!
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