Disable Android WebView/WebViewClient Initiated favicon.ico Request

Question

How can I disable the Android WebView/WebViewClient from sending out a request for favicon.ico when I call WebView.loadUrl()? I can see the call being made while profiling requests via CharlesProxy.

I do not own the HTML content that I am displaying in the WebView. My research has turned up a lot of results on workarounds from the server side but these won't work for me.

score 10 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 08 '17 at 09:54

10

for me the complete solution was:

   @Override
    public WebResourceResponse shouldInterceptRequest(WebView view, String url) {

        if(url.toLowerCase().contains("/favicon.ico")) {
            try {
                return new WebResourceResponse("image/png", null, null);
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        return null;
    }

    @Override
    @SuppressLint("NewApi")
    public WebResourceResponse shouldInterceptRequest(WebView view, WebResourceRequest request) {

        if(!request.isForMainFrame() && request.getUrl().getPath().endsWith("/favicon.ico")) {
            try {
                return new WebResourceResponse("image/png", null, null);
            } catch (Exception e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }

        return null;
    }

edited Aug 08 '17 at 09:54

marmor

27,641
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answered Dec 19 '16 at 13:05

ventura8

554
6
18

@MilošČernilovský dis one is right answer instead of putting icon in asset. seems to be very clean simple and right approach – Android is everything for me Sep 19 '19 at 04:29
1

As a side note, `request.isForMainFrame()` is however probably not doing what you expect, since it returns false for even the initially loaded URL containing the iframe. See: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40000939/what-is-isformainframe-request-in-android-webviewclient-property-meaning – mtkopone Nov 21 '19 at 12:57
What I find weird is that after doing that, even though I see no call being done in Charles, I receive an error as if the call had been made and no icon had been found (that's what happened to the app before removing the favicon call). I cleared the cache and disabled it, but it still happens...Idk why that's happening. Also, whatever I pass in the WebSourceResponse, like the mimeType, appears as empty when onReceivedHttpError or onReceivedError are called. – FabioR Jun 19 '20 at 17:22

score 6 · Answer 2 · answered May 24 '16 at 12:15

I achieved this by a little hack. First, I've created a fake 1x1 icon file and saved it to the assets folder. Then I overrode WebViewClient's shouldInterceptRequest() method, where I check the URL whether it is the request for favicon file and in that case return WebResourceResponse with InputStream which contains our fake icon:

    @Override
    @CallSuper
    public WebResourceResponse shouldInterceptRequest(WebView view, WebResourceRequest request) {
        if(!request.isForMainFrame() && request.getUrl().getPath().equals("/favicon.ico")) {
            try {
                return new WebResourceResponse("image/png", null, new BufferedInputStream(view.getContext().getAssets().open("empty_favicon.ico")));
            } catch (IOException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        return null;
    }

Note that the InputStream must not be closed in our code, because it is subsequently used by the WebView to read the icon. The WebviewClient must be set to the WebView via its setter:

mWebView.setWebViewClient(subclassedWebViewClient);

Very helpful, worked for me. If you don't need to support pre-Lollipop devices then `WebResourceResponse` can convey a 404 status and you don't need the dummy icon (or the exception handling). — rhashimoto, Jul 31 '16 at 16:37
you could return new WebResourceResponse("image/png", null, null); — ventura8, Dec 19 '16 at 13:04
i think we should not require to put icon in asset and do hack instead we can pass null for response and do the next process. — Android is everything for me, Sep 19 '19 at 04:27

J.J. Kim · Answer 3 · 2018-06-26T14:07:01.837

This is an answer for Kotlin

override fun shouldInterceptRequest(view: WebView?, request: WebResourceRequest?): WebResourceResponse? {
    return if (request?.url?.lastPathSegment == "favicon.ico") {
        WebResourceResponse("image/png", null, null)
    } else {
        super.shouldInterceptRequest(view, request)
    }
}

By default, return type is not nullable WebResourceResponse when Android Studio generates code, but It does not work so change return type to nullable WebResourceResponse.

score 2 · Answer 4 · answered May 10 '20 at 13:25

You can simply pass some dummy InputStream to WebResourceResponse as shown below.

my_webview.webViewClient = object : WebViewClient() {
    override fun shouldInterceptRequest(view: WebView?, request: WebResourceRequest?): WebResourceResponse? {
        if (request?.url?.toString()?.toLowerCase()?.endsWith("/favicon.ico") == true) {
            val inputStream = "".byteInputStream(Charset.defaultCharset())
            return WebResourceResponse("text", "UTF-8", inputStream)
        } else {
            return super.shouldInterceptRequest(view, request)
        }
    }
}

score -2 · Answer 5 · answered Mar 10 '16 at 04:57

-2

There is a method for WebView class named getFavicon(). I think that method is called by WebView to retrieve the favicon from server by issuing request. So you can try extending the WebView class and override the getFavicon() method to do nothing. I haven't tried it myself but this might work.

answered Mar 10 '16 at 04:57

Arun Babu

259
1
4
12

1

This doesn't work, the method is synchronous and returns only currently cached favicon's Bitmap. – Miloš Černilovský May 24 '16 at 11:54

Disable Android WebView/WebViewClient Initiated favicon.ico Request

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