this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2025
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Did you know that Google provides a free API to retrieve the favicon for any website? (programming.dev)
submitted 2 days ago by Pro@programming.dev to c/programming@programming.dev
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[–] bleistift2@sopuli.xyz 1 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 21 hours ago) (1 children)

So you might need to try different file extensions.

No, you don’t. The HTTP response header will tell you what type it is.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about. You need to know the name of the file before you can download it.

For instance, my lemmy client, says in its HTML that its favicon is <link id="favicon" rel="shortcut icon" type="image/x-icon" href="https://sopuli.xyz/pictrs/image/9c6eeb58-bf66-4a15-9537-0a822f3c4feb.png">. If I were to blindly download /favicon.ico, I’d naturally get a 404 page:

$ curl https://sopuli.xyz/favicon.ico -i
HTTP/2 404 
# more data
[–] who@feddit.org 2 points 21 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago)

You need to know the name of the file before you can download it.

Indeed. And /favicon.ico might not be a Windows ICO file, but instead be a PNG, GIF, or some other image format. I thought that's what you were (correctly) pointing out when you wrote "it doesn’t have to be an *.ico file". In such cases, the HTTP Content-Type field tells what image format it is.

If I were to blindly download /favicon.ico, I’d naturally get a 404 page:

Ah, so it turns out you were thinking of cases where /favicon.ico doesn't exist at all. That can also happen, but your suggestion to "try different file extensions" is not the answer, as you can see if you try to curl /favicon.png, /favicon.gif, etc. The correct approach is to parse a web page's HTML in search of a favicon URL, which you did in your above reply, but that's not the same thing as what you originally suggested.