# Why do the icons of my bookmarks disappear after a while? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [November 7, 2007, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594 "2007-11-07T22:38:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/1 "2007-11-07T22:38:55Z")
The thread title says it all realy. I know there is software that finds those small icons again, but I wonder why they vanish? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/2 "2007-11-07T22:49:24Z")
Firefox, IE, Opera, AOL… Windows, Mac, Linux… Or shall we guess? ---
**Author:** ![J\_Cubed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/c6cbf5/32.png) [@J\_Cubed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/J_Cubed)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 10:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/3 "2007-11-07T22:51:21Z")
They get cleared from the cache? Favicon gnomes? ---
**Author:** ![Q.E.D](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/51bf81/32.png) [@Q.E.D](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.E.D)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 10:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/4 "2007-11-07T22:53:28Z")
[QUOTE=J Cubed] Favicon gnomes? [/QUOTE] 1. Steal favicons 2. ??? 3. Profit! ---
**Author:** ![Charlie\_Tan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/charlie_tan/32/12582_2.png) [@Charlie\_Tan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Charlie_Tan)\ **Post date:** [November 7, 2007, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/5 "2007-11-07T23:16:27Z")
[QUOTE=Q.E.D.] Firefox, IE, Opera, AOL… Windows, Mac, Linux… Or shall we guess? [/QUOTE] IE6, FF2, XPpro It doesn’t matter. I handle quite a few computers in a day and while favicons restores them, I still wonder why they go away. ---
**Author:** ![GuanoLad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guanolad/32/42_2.png) [@GuanoLad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GuanoLad)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 6:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/6 "2007-11-08T06:46:03Z")
It’s built into Windows that they have some sort of shelflife, for some ridiculous reason. It might be something to do with how often your browser Temp files get flushed. ---
**Author:** ![Cicero](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cicero/32/3594_2.png) [@Cicero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cicero)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 9:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/7 "2007-11-08T09:32:23Z")
Mine didn’t diasappear the other day- they all got sorted against the wrong bookmark. And the wrong ones were coming up in the banner of the site. I.E. ---
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2007, 11:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/8 "2007-11-08T11:15:41Z")
With me (Fire Fox), they don’t disappear, they just are the wrong icons sometimes. The Straight Dope Front Page, for instance, has Google’s icon. And a radio station has the Onion’s icon. ---
**Author:** ![unlimitlessly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/e95f7d/32.png) [@unlimitlessly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/unlimitlessly)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2007, 9:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-do-the-icons-of-my-bookmarks-disappear-after-a-while/425594/9 "2007-11-13T21:09:39Z")
It’s not a shelflife, per se, but each site can specify a replacement icon. IE browsers honor this. Other browsers may let you keep the ones you’ve chosen. This still irks me. I like my Yahoo mail icon to look like a mailbox, but whenever I use IE to access it, it reverts to their generic “Y!”, same a their map page and their Yellow pages page… So I can’t use the icons as intended, to visually distinguish pages.