Most of us love to pin favicons of our favorite website to the Windows 10 Start Menu. But if you find that Websites Icons of the pinned shortcuts are missing in Windows 11/10, then this post is sure to help you fix the issue.
Start Menu is one of the greatest and valuable features of the Windows environment. Users have missed the start menu and its experience for a few years. Microsoft brought it back with Windows 10. You can access your favorite apps through the Start menu which cuts time in exploring.
Every browser has given options to the users to pin their favorites sites to the Start Menu. This is a revolutionary feature that lets you access your most visited websites with just a single click in the Start Menu.
Though the benefits of this feature are enjoyed by all, a few of the users are reporting that they are unable to see the icons of websites from the Start menu. In this guide, we will show you a few fixes to the missing website icons from the Start menu.
Website Icons are missing in Start Menu
You can get the missing icons back with any of the following fixes. They are:
- Unpin and Pin Again
- Rebuild Icon Cache
- Manually Change Icons
- Workaround.
Any of the above fixes can resolve the issue you are facing. Let’s see the fixes in great detail.
1] Unpin and Pin Again
When you are not seeing the icons of the websites you pinned to the Start menu, unpin those websites and pin them again. Your problem might be solved with this and you can see the icons of websites normally without a problem. If the problem is not fixed, try the following methods.
You should unpin and then Pin the website shortcut to the Start Menu and see if the simple act of repinning has helped.
2] Rebuild Icon Cache
Icon Cache has a copy of each icon on your PC. As the icons of websites pinned to the Start Menu are missing, rebuilding the icon cache will update the icons and start showing the icons as before. You can rebuild the entire icon cache following the guide below.
The missing website icons should appear now in the Start menu. If the problem still exists, try the next fix.
3] Manually Change Icons
Right-click on the shortcut and select Open folder location to land in the following place:
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs
Here locate the icon and try to change its icon manually.
To give the shortcut a proper icon, right-click on it and select Properties.
When the Properties box opens, click on the Change icon button.
The following box will open. You may select one of the system icons or you may click on the Browse button and browse to the folder where you may use your personal stock of .ico files.
Select the icon you want and click on Apply. Your shortcut will get the icon, you wanted.
Alternatively, you can use third-party applications like TileCreator to change icons or create tiles. This will solve the trouble you are facing with icons of websites you pinned to the start menu.
4] Workaround
Let us say you created a desktop shortcut using Chrome. And when you pin it to Start, the icon goes missing. Now in this case, do the following:
- Create another shortcut using the Chrome menu. Click on Settings > More Tools > Add to Desktop”to create another shortcut.
- This will create a folder with the correct icon in the following location:
%UserProfile%\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Web Applications
- Here you will see a folder with a long string or random alphabets or numbers as its name.
- Open the most recently created folder and you should see the icon for the shortcut you just created.
- Copy the path to this folder and save it.
- You should now have two shortcuts on your desktop.
- Now use this path in the FIRST desktop icon that was created. Use this to change its icon via Properties > Change Icon > Browse > Paste the saved path.
- Click Apply/OK and Pin it now and see.
We hope this guide helps you in fixing the missing icons of websites you pinned through web browsers you use on the Start menu.
Read next: How to automatically delete Microsoft Edge browsing history on exit.
