Adding favicons to the tabs in Safari would put the graphical back in graphical user interface.
Unlike Google's Chrome, Apple's Safari doesn't show favicons in tabs. Originally, Steve Jobs and the Human Interface (HI) team were against it for aesthetic reasons. That opinion has persisted to this day: While it may benefit power users, it wouldn't be ideal for mainstream customers.
Not everyone agrees, though, and John Gruber does a great job summing up why on Daring Fireball:
The gist of it is two-fold: (1) there are some people who strongly prefer to see favicons in tabs even when they don't have a ton of tabs open, simply because they prefer identifying tabs graphically rather than by the text of the page title; and (2) for people who do have a ton of tabs open, favicons are the only way to identify tabs.
Not having favicons on Safari tabs is also broadly and glaringly inconsistent with how the rest of the graphical user interfaces work on both iOS and macOS. And consistency is a user-facing feature.
Also worth noting the favicon would be helpful for visual accessibility—glyph + text better for processing.
— Steven Aquino (@steven_aquino) August 11, 2017
Favicons wouldn't even have to be displayed by default to solve the problem — Apple could just make it a preference setting, and power users would find it. The fact that it's not even a preference, even though it may well be the single most-common feature request for Safari, seems downright spiteful. And not just mean-to-others spiteful, but cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face spiteful. It might sound silly if you're not a heavy user of browser tabs, but I am convinced that the lack of favicons is holding back Safari's market share.
There's an argument that if someone really wants favicons they can pin tabs. That's not a great workaround. Pinned tabs solve persistence. Favicons solve scannability. I shouldn't have to pin a tab just to find it.
It's my understanding that feature requests in Apple's radar tracking system asking for favicons on Safari tabs go back as far as the introduction of Safari tabs.
Hopefully the attention its getting now prompts Craig Federighi, Apple's senior vice-president of software engineering, to give it another look.
I filed a radar (33848499) asking for it anyway this morning. Hoping a lot of people do it and can show Apple that this is important.
— Jeffrey Grossman (@Jeffrey903) August 11, 2017
Reader comments
Co-signed: Safari should display favicons in tabs
They should make it an option, as I don't like favicons and would hate to have to see them. My browser looks much cleaner without them.
I agree they don't really fit into the design. Having them toggleable defaulting to off would be the best solution.
They should be there. People that are visual rely on this. It should be a standard feature of any browser.
I can understand why Apple hasn't put them there, but at the same time they are very useful to identify tabs. I guess having it as a toggleable option is the best solution
I think Apple usually makes the best aesthetic decisions in tech, but this is a no-brainer. The tab favicon option should be standard. Any chance a developer could create somthing we could download for this? I would be happy to pay for that.
Should it be standard if it goes against the "best aesthetic decisions"? It should either be a toggleable option or use the "pinned tab" icons
<shakes head/> Why? People that do not have a ton of tabs open can find their content quickly. People that have a metric ton of tabs open are not going to be helped with it. And people that are visual thinkers probably are much better assisted when they punch in ⇧⌘\ anyway. Come on people. Time to improve your process. And time to leave the idea that all browsers are equal behind you.
You can also pinch inwards on the trackpad as if you're zooming-out to get access to the ⇧⌘\ option
I vote that tabs have icons (having it as an option is fine). I don't use pinned tabs much as I thought I would. I wanted the pinned page to be dynamic instead of static. For example, I had hoped if I pinned the iMore homepage it would bring me the fresh content when I opened Safari--not the page as it was when I pinned it.