Why iPhone Home Screen Icons Don’t Update: The Hidden “Shadow Cache” in Safari Explained

Last updated: 2026/02/02

“Why isn’t my new icon showing?”
“I replaced the image, but the home screen still shows the old one…”
If you’ve added a website to your iPhone’s home screen and the icon won’t update,
you’ve run into one of Safari’s most confusing behaviors.

The real cause is a little-known system inside iOS:
Safari’s hidden “Shadow Cache.”

In this guide, we’ll break down the entire mechanism—
how iOS stores icons, why they don’t refresh, how to force updates,
and how tools like OJapp avoid the problem entirely.

The Short Answer: iOS Stores Icons in a Separate Hidden Cache

When a user adds a website to their home screen (a Web Clip),
iOS stores the icon in a dedicated cache separate from normal browser cache.

This “shadow cache” has several unique characteristics:

• Clearing Safari cache does NOT remove it
• Reloading the webpage does not trigger an update
• If the icon URL is the same, the old image will always be used
• The cache can stay for days or longer

In other words:
once iOS saves an icon, it treats it like an app icon — stable and persistent.

How iOS Stores Web Clip Icons

When Safari detects a Web Clip request (via apple-touch-icon
or manifest.json), it stores:

• The rendered icon image
• The path (URL) of the icon
• Meta information about the bookmark

Once this happens, iOS will continue using the cached file
even if the server image changes.

This is why “uploading a new icon” rarely works on iPhone.

Why Apple Designed It This Way

Apple treats home screen bookmarks like mini-apps.
If icons changed unexpectedly, problems could occur:

• Users might think an app was replaced
• Icons could break mid-update
• Malicious sites could swap icons unexpectedly

To prevent this, iOS applies an “App-like persistence policy,”
which includes the hidden shadow cache.

Symptoms of Shadow Cache Issues

• The icon never updates, even after replacing the file
• Safari cache clearing does nothing
• Re-adding the Web Clip still uses the old image
• Even changing servers/CDNs can fail if URLs look similar

During OJapp development, this behavior caused countless hours of debugging.

How to FORCE an Icon Update (Guaranteed Methods)

1. Change the icon’s URL (the strongest method)

iOS identifies icons by URL.
If the URL changes, iOS MUST fetch a new file.

Examples:

/icon.png  
/icon.png?v=2  
/icon-2026.png

This is the only 100% reliable method on iPhone.

2. Delete the existing Web Clip → Add again

This works, but requires user action — not ideal for public links.

3. Wait for iOS to purge the cache (not recommended)

iOS occasionally removes stale shadow cache entries,
but the timing is unpredictable and unreliable.

How OJapp Solves This Automatically

OJapp avoids the shadow cache problem through a simple but powerful approach:

Every generated icon uses a unique file path.

Example:

https://cdn.ojapp.app/icon/7f3a9.png
https://cdn.ojapp.app/icon/bc22e.png

This prevents iOS from reusing old cached icons and ensures
users always see the newest icon instantly.

Technical Notes: When Shadow Cache Almost Always Occurs

• Overwriting apple-touch-icon.png with the same filename
• CDN caching old versions of files
• Redirecting icon URLs (iOS may treat them as identical)
• Using query parameters inconsistently

The worst-case scenario is
CDN caching × iOS shadow cache = double-layered stale icons。
This was a major pain point during early OJapp development.

Summary: The Real Villain Is the “Shadow Cache”

• iPhone stores Web Clip icons in a hidden persistent cache
• Normal Safari cache clearing does nothing
• Icons with identical URLs are never re-fetched
• Changing the URL forces an update instantly
• OJapp solves the issue by generating unique icon paths

Once you understand this mechanism,
you can fully control how iPhone updates your icons.