A Guide to Removing All Favicons from Your Firefox 3 Cache

You’d think clearing all the favicon.ico files from Firefox 3 would be an easy task, right?

Unfortunately, simply clearing your cache won’t do the trick because the icons aren’t actually stored there. Instead, they’re kept in a SQLite database called places.sqlite in your Firefox profile directory.

Luckily, there are three methods you can use to clear all favicons.

The first method: Create a new Firefox profile. However, this can be quite cumbersome as you’ll have to reset all your preferences for the new profile.

The second method: Delete all bookmarks, clear the cache, and start fresh. This can be just as annoying, if not more so.

The third method: Manually empty the moz_favicons table in places.sqlite. This method works with a Firefox plugin and doesn’t require you to reset anything else.

(There’s also a fourth method: using the Favicon Picker plugin? But nope, this doesn’t clear the cache for all favicons at once. It only works for individual ones.)

Now, let me walk you through the SQLite method:

Step 1:

Download and install the Firefox add-on called SQLite Manager.

Step 2:

Launch SQLite Manager by clicking on Tools and then SQLite Manager, like this:

Step 3.

Alright, here’s what you gotta do next. Go ahead and open up SQLite Manager. To do that, click on the Database tab at the top left corner of the screen. Then, hit the Connect Database option. This will bring up a dialog box where you can open your file.

Now, in the File Name field, type in %APPDATA%MozillaFirefox, just like that. Got it? Good.

Okay, now press enter. Give that button a little tap.

Look at that! You just opened up the Profiles folder. Nice work! Now, inside that folder, you’re gonna find another folder with a weird name, like aDPa7219.default. Open that one up, and you should see something that looks kinda like this:

If you’re seeing this above, then I’ll need you to open up places.sqlite.

Step 4.

Here’s what I want you to do next. Right-click on the moz_favicons folder on the left-hand side and select the option that says Empty Table. Be careful not to click on “Drop table” because that will erase the entire thing. We definitely don’t want that. Just choose to empty it.

When you’re prompted, just click “Yes” to confirm that you really do want to delete all the records from moz_favicons. It’ll look something like this:

Step 4.

Now, let’s close the SQLite Manager.

You should also close Firefox, including any other Firefox windows you have open.

All the favicons have been cleared. Every single one of them. It’s quite a sight to behold.

Final notes

Rest assured, none of your bookmarks will be affected; they’ll still be there.

The places.sqlite file will remain the same size as before. So, if you were expecting it to get smaller, you’ll be disappointed. However, the favicon cache has been cleared, and that’s what truly matters.

Now, go ahead and enjoy your browsing experience.

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13 thoughts on “Clearing All Favicons From Firefox 3 Cache [How-To]”

Anastasia Y says:

I just tried the Firefox plugin Favicon Restorer, and it works like a charm.

lucas lockieLucas says:

That’s fantastic! Finally, my favicons are back. Thank you so much.

Youer W says:

Unfortunately, this method is not working for me on Firefox 3.6.12.

WebmasterFOHS says:

So far, it looks good. I was curious about removing old favicons from my blogger-powered websites with pagination, and this seems to do the trick. I’ll let you all know after I reboot. I’m about 90% sure it’ll work.

Email says:

This method doesn’t work for me on Firefox 3.6. The file path for Mac users is ~/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/x.default/places.sqlite

Mnlichtenstein says:

That was quite enjoyable! Thanks!

Christine says:

Sweet…thanks!

eureka says:

This is the only method that worked for me. I tried other methods, but without success. I did it on Windows 7 and needed to run Firefox with Administrative Privileges to empty the table. Many thanks! (Excuse my English)

insultant says:

Despite the “easier” ways of refreshing favicons, this was a great article that helped people understand what’s under the hood in Firefox. Plus, it gave us a cool little tool for SQLite! Thank you for this tutorial, it’s greatly appreciated!

Lembit says:

I found this through Google. It was such a hassle, but I tried the following with Firefox 3.5:

1) Opened Organize Bookmarks (Ctrl+Shift+B)

2) Searched browser history for the pages of the sites I wanted to refresh the favicon for

3) Deleted those pages from History

4) Restarted Firefox.

And if this doesn’t work? What do I do if nothing else works?! (Sorry, I’m just frustrated.) I’ve tried pretty much everything anyone has suggested, and the favicons still won’t show up for Wikipedia, Facebook, Anilinkz, and more. I would tolerate it, but I prefer to keep my bookmarks toolbar with just the icons, no text, so I have more space. That doesn’t work so well if the icons won’t show up. Any ideas or suggestions?

Doug Barned says:

Thanks for the article! It really helped me out. Instead of deleting the whole batch, I went in and just deleted the one I wanted.