Bookmark icons should update automatically

[ADGrimes]

I recently imported my bookmarks from a previous Firefox install, and the icons were all a grey globe icon. When I clicked on them and used the bookmark link for a while, the icon generally changes to something linked to the webpage (such as an Excel icon, or Sharepoint icon). It would be better if the icons populate themselves without me having to individually click on them all.

[lostshelf]

Is there any new update? Jon said this was supposed to be rolled out in 114 but this still isn't working on Firefox 127.0.2. Does it have to be enabled from the config?

Am I misunderstanding what "rolled out" means or is it a Windows/Mac OS only feature.

I am on Endeavour OS Linux and I am up to date.

[RaiseDennis]

idk but it seems like this feature will never come to ipad os. I just want my bookmarked tabs/folders on my ipad when I log into the same mozilla account but that isn't happening. this thread is already like 3/4 years old. considering this it will probably never happen.

[RaiseDennis]

I want the folders/bookmarks on my desktop when I log into my mozzila account. but I don't think it will ever happen cause this thread is two years old and @Jon  isn't reading this or not taking it seriously

[Jon]

@lostshelf & @RaiseDennis just passed this along to our team - will try to get an update here shortly

[asafko]

Hi folks,

There are a few standalone issues at play here, unfortunately:

- bring bookmarks' favicons when you import them to Firefox from another browser.

We indeed shipped the support of bringing favicons for your bookmarks from the major browsers in 114.

- continuously sync bookmark favicons across your devices.

There are several technical limitations to doing this, especially in a privacy-respectful way. I'll let the team that works on Sync chime in this thread, but there are a handful of side effects if Firefox "goes" to synced websites and downloads their favicons. Consider these three scenarios:

• I’m a political dissident traveling to Canada. There, I use my phone to navigate to a forbidden blog in my home country. After I come back, I open my laptop and Sync downloads the blog website favicon. A request is sent to the blog servers, and the surveillance party sees that request going.
  
  
• I use the same Sync account at home and work. At home I go to an “inappropriate” website. When I turn on my computer at work, the history is synced, downloading the favicon from the inappropriate website. My network administrator sees that request going, too.
  
  
• I bookmark a bunch of research papers on an academic website that limits me to viewing X papers for free. A few requests for a favicon (without me actually going to the website and viewing bookmarked papers) get my IP range put in the “you need to buy a subscription” bucket.
  

[ilyak]

Hi @asafko ,

And what do you think about just syncing bookmark favicons cache across devices?  May I be wrong, that is the same way Chrome-based browsers do. At least, we'll get the last state of sites on the browsing moment, without compromising privacy.

[jstamm]

@asafkoIs there any chance we could get a response to @ilyak's suggestion? This seems like a sensible approach. If increased bandwidth cost for syncing these images (small though they may be) is a concern, perhaps only favicons below a very small file size (2KB each?) should be synced, with anything exceeding that being converted by the initial Firefox client to a compressed 16x16 PNG (which will be a maximum of about 1.0KB each) for use in the synced cache. When a new client gets their synced bookmarks, only these small versions get synced, with the full quality version to be downloaded by that client once they visit the site for the first time.

[jebug29]

Firefox already has a built-in when exporting bookmarks to HTML format it will export the Favicon data as base64-encoded strings included in the HTML file. It should be simple enough to include this data in the JSON export/import and/or whatever is used on serverside to copy those bookmarks to the other synced devices. I'm sure this is probably exacty what Chromium-based browsers do, and considering Firefox has the built-in provisions for it, there's no reason not to allow this basic quality of life feature.