Deleting "Bookmarks Bar" and "Bookmarks Menu" folders from Bookmarks
Hi all,
I synched my Safari Bookmarks...really didn't need to and now I don't want these "Bookmarks Bar" and "Bookmarks Menu" folders. Why can't I delete them?
Thanks,
Ben
iPhone 8B, 5G iPod, Core 2 Duo Macbook, 12" G4 Powerbook,
Mac OS X (10.4.10)
When you are looking at your bookmarks in Safari on the iPhone, there is an edit button on the bottom left. When you hit that, little minus signs inside of red circles show up next to every bookmark and bookmark folder. When you hit one of those, the delete button pops up.
Ahhh, I see. I have the history folder only. I never did sync bookmarks with my PC.
I am not sure if the sync is bidirectional. What happens if you uncheck sync bookmarks in iTunes and resync? My guess is that they'll stay there.
In that case, the only drastic measure is to delete all the contents of the iPhone and resync from scratch. That's the hard, unelegant way of doing it. 😀 If you don't find another easier way to do this, that may warrant dropping a note to Apple and letting them know...
This is by design. The bookmarks menu and bar are integral to the desktop version of Safari. You can't delete them on the desktop so you can't delete them on the phone. Indeed, you could restore the phone and start from scratch, but if you sync bookmarks, they will reappear.
This happened to me also: Sync your bookmarks with an empty Internet Explorer browser. This will copy both folders there. Then you can delete them from IE and re-sync, your unwanted folders will be gone! I keep a copy of IE just for backing up my iPhone bookmarks.
Both of these menus can be deleted from Safari's iPhone bookmarks menu but the process is a little involved and requires the use of Property List Editor for the Developer Tools package.
If you have this, chances are you already know what to do, but otherwise you will need to download the Developer Tools package from Apple (and even on a fast connection) it is probably quicker to reload your iPhone from scratch.
But just in case:
1a) Quit Safari on your computer.
1b) with you iPhone sync'd to iTunes, unselect the sync automatically box. (You can go back later, just do it for now.)
2) Navigate to ~/Library/Safari/Booksmarks.plist file.
3) Make a copy and rename it Bookmarks(original).plist. This is your backup file in case things go wrong.
4) Launch Safari.
5) Create a new folder called Bookmarks, or whatever you want your top level Bookmarks folder to be on your iPhone.
6) Drag all folders and urls that you want for you iPhone into this folder.
7) Arrange it the way that you want. You can also do this on the iPhone, but it is easier to do it here, than on the phone.
8) QUIT SAFARI AND DO NOT RELAUNCH IT. (This is important, because you are going to edit this file to remove those folders and Safari will recreate them if you launch it.)
9) Open your Bookmarks.plist file in the Property List Editor.
10) Navigate to the Children arrow and expand.
11) Select the "0" item and delete (That is the Bookmarks bar, or Bookmarksbar menu that Safari hard codes to the bookmarks list)
12) Select the "1" item and also delete (This is the BookmarksMenu item)
13) If you poke around in this file, you will notice the History, RSS feeds, and your top level menu that you created in #5.
14) Save the modifications and close the Bookmarks.plist file, (save changes if prompted).
15) DO NOT LAUNCH SAFARI (just a reminder)
16) Launch iTunes and select the iPhone, DO NOT SYNC IT YET.
17) Select the info tab, and scroll to the Web Browser section and select the "Sync Safari bookmarks" checkbox.
18) Scroll to the Advanced section and select the "Bookmarks" checkbox.
19) Click "Apply" and "Sync"
20) wait for sync to complete.
21) remove iPhone from cradle and check your Safari bookmarks. You should be good to go with the iPhone's Safari and its bookmarks, however you are not done yet.
22) THIS IS IMPORTANT. For this modification to last, you have to go back to iTunes.
23) reinstall the iPhone on the cradle, AGAIN DO NOT SYNC.
24) go back to the "Sync Safari bookmarks" checkbox and unselect it. Then click the "Apply" button again. This will prevent Safari on your computer from syncing to Safari on your iPhone. If you ever do, with this box checked, those two pesky menus will reappear.
Sure you can go through a long process to delete them, but why bother? You can just create a new folder for bookmarks you want to use just on your iphone (like "iphonemarks"), and just stay in that folder. You'll never see the other two unless you back out of the iphonemarks folder. The advantage is that you can keep it all synced, and on your desktop you can just copy all the marks you want into the new folder to make populating it easy. Just my two cents.
Genius.
In case anyone can't see it: this really works cos of the hierarchical up-and-down nature of the bookmarks folders in iPhone... plus you do get sync'ing and you still get to navigate up to your full Safari bookmarks if you want them.
Actually, it's not genious and indeed quite inconvenient. Try to bookmark a site directly on your iPhone with those two menus there. You have to drill through the first "Bookmarks Bar" and all its sub-folders, which if you are like most Safari users with tabbed browsing and have scores of sub-tabs, can make scrolling to the desired sub-folder very difficult. Heck even finding the top heirarchal folder can be difficult.
This has been killing me, it is a matter of context. Desktop vs mobile. It is silly to assume users would want the same bookmarking organization (or bookmarks for that matter) on thier desktop and mobile device. My hope is that if safari remains the hub for managing bookmarks across your apple devices they add an "iphone" folder at the same level as the "bookmarks bar" and "bookmarks menu" in the desktop version of safari. The interface in iTunes could work the same way it does for playlist. You could simply check the bookmark sources you wanted to sync to the iphone. My guess is they ran out of time to include this in the first release... I bet it is coming.
I had the same problem as many of you, accidently syncing my iPhone to Mac. From looking at some of the above posts I worked out an easier way to remove the Bookmarks Bar and Bookmarks Menu from iPhone's Safari. It requires SSH and an FTP client to get into the phone. It's a bit similar to what Zac suggested but no as complicated.
All you have to do is navigate to ~/Library/Safari/Booksmarks.plist file and open it with Text Edit. You'll see
bplist00Ô3 at the top of the file, keep that then just highlight all the bookmarks/entries you wish to delete. Scroll down until you see the beginning of your standard iPhone bookmarks...
