For all my Joomla websites, I face the problem that default Joomla favicon shows up after a period of time despite changing with custom favicon through FileZilla mode. Is there any permanent solution?

  • All of the proposed solutions (so far) assume that the problem is in the web browser. I also see this problem on a Joomla site, but the custom favicon file is actually being replaced by the template default somehow. Possibly that's happening to the OP as well? – boot13 Nov 23 '16 at 12:32

Favicons can admittedly be a pain in the arse.

Solution 1:

Add a query to the path of the favicon (?v=2), for example:

href="<?php echo $this->baseurl; ?>/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/favicon.ico?v=2"

This forces the browser to download a newer version of the favicon

Solution 2:

  1. Go to: www.yoursite.com/templates/YOUR_TEMPLATE/favicon.ico
  2. Push enter
  3. CTRL + F5
  4. Restart Browser

Clear your cache and/or restart your local server. If not it takes time for the changes to take effect.


Browsers store the favicon and it's one of the elements that is hard to refresh, even if clearing caches.

Here are some solutions to help with refreshing the favicon you see in your browser:

-ok I see @Lodders answer, there are the 2 first options I wanted to suggest, so below are a few other options by browser. Since I am on a mac, the solutions I propose are mainly for mac - and the 3 browsers I am most familiar with.


Navigate to FF about:config page. Filter with the term: browser.chrome Set browser.chrome.favicons and browser.chrome.site_icons to false. Close and re-open FF. Re-set the above setting to true, to re-enable favicons, and force FF to download fresh ones from the websites you navigate.

For firefox there is also an addon that removes/clear favicons: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/delete-bookmark-icons/

*I think this should be similar in Windows as well.

Chrome Mac:

Remove the file:

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Favicons

*There should be a similar location where Chrome stores local data in Windows.

Safari Mac:

In older versions, it was possible to select to remove website icons, from the Reset Safari command.

In recent versions, you can remove the file:


I just came upon this issue too. It's likely that it's changing with every system update due to the template you are using. The default template will keep changing the favicon when it updates. So it seems your options are to fix the favicon at each update or change templates. Check out the commentary here: https://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?t=937032

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