Lucy Linder

Posted on Oct 28, 2021 • Edited on Jan 13, 2023 • Originally published at blog.derlin.ch

Get favicons from any domain using a hidden google API

#webdev #tooling #todayilearned

Did you know ?

Google offers a secret URL that can automatically pull the favicon image of any domain. Cherries on the cake, we can ask for different sizes and the images returned are in PNG format (not ICO), meaning they will render correctly in all browsers using the <img> tag.

The API works using a simple GET:



https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=${domain}&sz=${size}

The query parameters are:

domain: mandatory, the domain you are interested in,
sz: optional, a size hint such as 256.

In case the right size is not found, it will return the default one, usually 16x16.

https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=dev.to&sz=128

https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=dev.to&sz=512 (nothing found for 512x512, so returns a 16x16 PNG)

https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=stackoverflow.com&sz=128 (yep, sometimes the quality is far from optimal)

Top comments (15)

fiiv • Oct 28 '21

Nice writeup! Privacy-friendly search engine DuckDuckGo also has one similar to the Google one:

https://icons.duckduckgo.com/ip3/dev.to.ico

Also there's one I made called Icon Horse that has some additional features:

https://icon.horse/icon/dev.to

Lucy Linder • Oct 28 '21

Wasn't aware of those ones, nice to know thanks !
I would just state that Icon Horse is not free (but still a very nice tool).

Do you know if duckduckgo supports parameters, such as the size hint for example ?

fiiv • Oct 28 '21

To my knowledge DDG doesn’t have various customisation params available.

Icon Horse is free, but premium features cost money.

Tiago Rangel • Nov 1 '22

Icon horse seems quite nice! Big image, doesn't stop at redirections, very cool.

Rosen Simov • Mar 2 '23

Your Icon Horse service looks amazing! I'll give it a try real soon.

Abhi Dadhaniya • Jan 9 '23

icon.horse is the best one... Thanks for the sharing

Lucy Linder • Oct 29 '21

Here is yet another service: favicongrabber.com

The call looks like:

http://favicongrabber.com/api/grab/dev.to

The response is a JSON with all the available icons (use ?pretty=true for nice json formatting):

{
  "domain": "dev.to",
  "icons": [
    {
      "sizes": "192x192",
      "src": "https://res.cloudinary.com/practicaldev/image/fetch/s--t7tVouP9--/c_limit,f_png,fl_progressive,q_80,w_192/https:/practicaldev-herokuapp-com.freetls.fastly.net/assets/devlogo-pwa-512.png"
    },
    ...
}

However, I got some gateway timeouts and trying favicongrabber.com/api/grab/stacko... currently returns:

{"error":"General API error."}

Private Proxies • Aug 29

That's a great tip! The Google API is indeed useful for quick favicon retrieval. However, it has some limitations, like inconsistent quality and size availability.
If you're looking for a more robust solution, you might want to check out FaviconExtractor (faviconextractor.com). It offers multiple sizes (16x16 to 512x512), works with most websites, auto-generates SVGs when needed, and provides ready-to-use HTML snippets. It's designed to handle cases where Google's API might fall short.
FaviconExtractor also supports DuckDuckGo as a fallback source, ensuring higher success rates. It's open-source (github.com/seadfeng/favicon-downlo...) and can be self-hosted or used via API.
While Google's hidden API is handy, tools like FaviconExtractor can offer more comprehensive solutions for developers needing reliable favicon extraction. Have you encountered any specific challenges with favicon retrieval in your projects?

Firoz ishakk • Dec 12 '23

how can i change the default favicon (if a website doesn't have a favicon, it shows a blurry image of a sphere.) I want to include an image i have created .. let's say "/logo@512.png" ,i need this as default if no other images are present. How do i do it ?