How to download favicon from website?

Question

When you browse a web site, the "favicon" icon shows up next to the URL (or the bookmark).

If I want that graphic, is there a way to download it directly from the site? I'd prefer to download it directly from the web, but if all else fails, I'll dig it out of wherever it is stored on my computer (Windows 7, Firefox 3.6.6).

Answer 1

Studiohack has the "thorough" approach but heres a short hack:

1. Enter the domain name like http://superuser.com/
2. Add favicon.ico to the end
3. Press enter (this should be in url: http://superuser.com/favicon.ico
4. Right click on image and save as

Answer 2

by reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Favicon you can also find that:

The following format is cross-browser compatible and is supported 
by Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome, and Opera.[3]

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://www.example.com/myicon.ico" />

Additionally the following is also acceptable:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="/somepath/myicon.ico" />

The following shows the supported format of link tags, using examples, 
for HTML and XHTML.

HTML:
<link rel="icon" type="image/vnd.microsoft.icon" 
      href="http://example.com/image.ico">
<link rel="icon" type="image/png" href="http://example.com/image.png">
<link rel="icon" type="image/gif" href="http://example.com/image.gif">

so, the common practice is indeed to put a file called 'favicon.ico' on the root folder, but to be sure, you have to lookup the source code of the served file and see if and what is defined there.

eg, for http://superuser.com it is

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://sstatic.net/su/favicon.ico"> 

Answer 3

In Firefox 3: Click the favicon, a popup appears, and you can click "more information"...in the window that pops up, go to the "Media" tab. Highlight the specific media item that you want (it shows a preview in the large, white space in the bottom of the window), then click "Save As". Give it a name, pick a location, and you're done! :)

Some sites may not have a favicon listed, but some will...hit or miss...try this on Super User...SU has a favicon listed...

Answer 4

Try this bit of PHP which grabs the favicon and saves it as an .ico file. You could probably use this to grab almost any file. Note the use of the 'b' for 'binary' flag.

<?php
    echo '<p>Fetching Favicon.ico.</p>';
    $in = fopen('http://targetdomain.com/favicon.ico', 'rb');
    $contents = '';
    while (!feof($in)) {
        $contents .= fread($in, 8192);
        }
    fclose($in);
    $len = strlen($contents);
    echo '<p>Read ' . $len . ' bytes.</p>';

    $out = fopen('favicon.ico', 'wb');
    fwrite($out, $contents, $len);
    fclose($out);
    echo '<p>Written Favicon.ico.</p>';
?>