Demo: Animated Favicon
The article demonstrates how animated favicons work, allowing websites to dynamically update the small icon in browser tabs for effects like notifications, loading states, or branding. It includes a live interactive demo where users can trigger different animations and see them play in real time. While useful for specific cases like progress indicators or alerts, excessive use can be distracting and costly for performance. The technique relies on drawing to a canvas and updating the favicon link with a data URL, ideally using a Web Worker to maintain animation in background tabs.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Animated Favicons: Make Your Browser Tab Move (With a Live Demo) April 28, 2026 Favicon.im (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); You probably noticed something move at the top of this tab while reading. That's an animated favicon — the same trick Gmail uses for new mail counts and Discord uses for notification dots, except yours can do basically anything you can draw on a canvas. This article includes a live demo you can poke at. Click a button, watch your actual browser tab change. No screenshots, no embedded videos — the favicon you're looking at right now becomes the demo. Why Animate a Favicon at All? Honestly, most sites shouldn't. A spinning icon in every tab gets annoying fast, and it eats CPU.
…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at Favicon.