favicon

What it is and what it does

favicon is a Python library that discovers and extracts favicon metadata from websites. It fetches a website's HTML, parses link and meta tags to locate favicon references, and returns a list of Icon objects containing the URL, dimensions, and format of each icon found. The library wraps requests and beautifulsoup4 to handle the HTTP fetching and HTML parsing.

You use it by calling favicon.get() with a URL, optionally passing request parameters like headers or timeout. The function returns Icon objects you can iterate over or filter by size. It's designed for scenarios where you need to programmatically retrieve favicon URLs for display, caching, or analysis—for example, building a bookmark manager, website metadata aggregator, or favicon cache.

Use it for:

• Bulk-download favicons for a list of URLs to build a local icon cache for a web application
• Extract favicon URLs from bookmarks or website directories for display in a custom browser or dashboard
• Analyze favicon metadata (dimensions, format) to identify high-resolution icons for archival or comparison
• Populate website metadata in a content aggregator or link-sharing tool with visual branding

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Fetches and parses a website's favicon from its HTML, returning icon metadata including URL, dimensions, and format.

Yes, if you need favicon extraction and can tolerate dormant maintenance. The library is stable and has no known vulnerabilities, but it hasn't been updated since 2019—verify that its favicon discovery logic still covers your target websites. Low install friction and permissive licensing make it a low-risk addition.

Install

favicon on PyPI

pip install favicon

uv add favicon

poetry add favicon

Installing favicon

Before you install

Low install friction with two common dependencies (requests and beautifulsoup4). Maintenance is dormant—last release was 2019-08-31, though the repository remains unarchived.

License in practice

MIT license is permissive; you can use, modify, and distribute this package freely with minimal restrictions.

Quickstart

pip install favicon

import favicon

icons = favicon.get('https://www.python.org/')
for icon in icons:
    print(icon.url, icon.width, icon.height, icon.format)

Verify before relying

• Whether the package handles modern favicon discovery methods (e.g., webmanifest.json, SVG favicons) added after 2019
• Current compatibility with recent versions of beautifulsoup4 and requests, given the dormant maintenance status

Package facts

Evidence: favicon-0.7.0-py2.py3-none-any.whl

Keywords: favicon, icon

Tags

More WWW/HTTP packages