How to delete Safari bookmarks from iCloud?

Question

Level 1

54 points

How to delete Safari bookmarks from iCloud?

This is driving me nuts.

I have just an iMac and an iPhone connected to iCloud.

I'm organizing my bookmarks on my iMac, but iCloud keeps replacing them (with a scrambled list of bookmarks I have no idea where it's coming from).

Since it's not possible to delete more than one bookmark at a time from the iPhone I've turned off iCloud on the iPhone and I'm trying to get iCloud to grip that my iMac is the "master", but to no avail.

I've seen threads about this and tried different approaches but nothing has helped so far.

How do I fix this?

Posted on Aug 29, 2019 12:21 AM

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Answer 1

tygb

Level 9

64,610 points

Aug 29, 2019 8:05 PM in response to TZW

See the section of restore safari bookmarks with earlier version in the help link https://help.apple.com/icloud/#/mme6182cfc37

And as per this article https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/safari/ibrw1039/mac

Note: Safari uses iCloud to keep your bookmarks the same on all your Mac computers and iOS devices that have Safari turned on in iCloud preferences. With iCloud, your bookmarks and Reading List are archived automatically, and you can restore them from an earlier version at any time.

Make sure in Mac system preferences > iCloud if the box of safari is unchecked , tap it a pop window will appear , click on ok .

You must not turn off iCloud in iPhone see this https://support.apple.com/en-in/guide/iphone/iph42ab2f3a7/ios

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Answer 2

TZW Author

Level 1

54 points

Aug 31, 2019 10:25 AM in response to TZW

I don't know exactly how, but it's solved now.

After getting a long, scrambled bookmarks list pushed back to my devices and deleting it over and over I started to notice the list actually got a bit shorter and shorter until finally all bookmarks were gone from iCloud.

I still couldn't add my old Safari bookmarks back easily. It worked locally, but iCloud then quickly removed all of my folders and put all my bookmarks in a single, scrambled list and pushed it back. However, this list was shorter because by now I had deleted my "Others" folder which probably contained several thousands of old bookmarks.

So long story short I recreated my folder structure from within Safari and now iCloud syncing is working as it should.

My guess is my old bookmarks list was too long for iCloud to handle + perhaps Apple changed the way folders are coded in the bookmarks plist file between my old Safari version and the latest.

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