Why is bookmark syncing taking so long with Catalina?

Question

Level 1

58 points

Why is bookmark syncing taking so long with Catalina?

It's been a couple of days now since I "upgraded" to Catalina (don't get me started about the loss of streaming links😡) and my 2017 iMac continues to not allow me to bookmark or edit bookmarks in any fashion. What was once an occasional thing on my phone has, with Catalina, now been the default mode for Safari bookmarks on my iMac. See the screenshot.

Anyone else have this problem? Anyone know, except for logging out of iCloud, how to fix it? Is there hope that it will eventually return to normalcy?

Posted on Oct 16, 2019 6:58 PM

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Answer 1

raina_b22

Community Specialist

Oct 22, 2019 3:35 PM in response to chuckefus

Hey there chuckefus,

Thanks for reaching out to Apple Support Communities. I understand you’re having issues adding bookmarks in Safari after updating to macOS Catalina. I’ll be happy to help with this.

Go to System Preferences, then click Date & Time and make sure everything there is correct. Choose Automatically if it’s not selected.

See if this occurs in safe boot or a new user account to isolate and possibly resolve this issue:

Use safe mode to isolate issues with your Mac

How to test an issue in another user account on your Mac

If this doesn’t help, you can reinstall macOS using the steps from the following link. While this should retain your user settings and files, it’s always a good idea to make a backup before doing this:

How to back up your Mac

Reinstall macOS

Let us know if this helps.

Cheers.

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Answer 2

blfx

Level 1

4 points

Nov 1, 2019 2:28 PM in response to chuckefus

I'm also experiencing Safari bookmarks sync problems after upgrading my MacBook Pro to Catalina and iPhone XS to iOS 13.

The issue is: after doing some editing on my bookmarks (adding, deleting, etc.), the changes simply don't sync to the other device.

I've tried rebooting, turning off the firewall in macOS (possible fix mentioned in several threads), deleting all bookmaks on both devices and recreating the structure from scratch, verified Date & Time settings. Even after doing a clean install of macOS and resetting all content and settings on my iPhone, I still have the same problem. Sometimes it may start working for a while, but it always gets to the point where it simply isn't syncing anymore.

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Answer 3

chuckefus Author

Level 1

58 points

Oct 22, 2019 6:31 PM in response to raina_b22

I will look into that but I am not sure how "another user" would have access to my bookmarks file. Not sure about Safe Mode. It's important to remember that all three devices were syncing before I upgraded to Catalina. [BTW, date and time look fine on my iMac - are you suggesting that somehow the other two devices are using something else?]

I am at the point where I am going to do something else, more surgical. I am going to back up the bookmarks file on my iMac, and, separately, the bookmarks on my MacBook Air. The latter is kept up to date with my phone (all three used to sync).

Then I will take the iMac Safari off of iCloud, delete it's bookmarks, and then reenable Safari on iCloud.

Whatever else, I can import the two back up files and hopefully merge them into one thing on all three devices. And hopefully, after that, sync will occur again across all three devices, not just two.

It's a mess but somehow Catalina has bungled it up into a mess anyway.

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Answer 4

chuckefus Author

Level 1

58 points

Oct 23, 2019 1:42 PM in response to chuckefus

Well, nothing seems to work. Date and time are fine on the other devices.

I have to take my iMac Safari off of the bookmark sync to make it useful again, and transfer bookmark files the old fashion way - with an external drive. Can't do that with the phone of course.

Apple broke my bookmark sync with Catalina. I suppose that if I upgrade my MacBook Air to Catalina that too will break it.

Someday, Apple will learn how to do software testing.

I will submit a product feedback report.

Not a happy customer.

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Answer 5

chuckefus Author

Level 1

58 points

Nov 1, 2019 4:27 PM in response to blfx

Well, that's interesting.

I had not tried the firewall thing but I did try editing bookmarks offline, so to speak, on my iMac - I cut it down to a tiny fraction hoping that would speed up the sync process but it did not help (which is just amazing). My MacBook Air is still on Mojave and so far as I know still syncs to the phone. But the desktop broke with Catalina (which makes me shy about upgrading the Air).

One interesting thing I just discovered: my iMac history is STILL syncing with the phone. The history, not the bookmarks.

But thanks for that input - it saves me a lot of time. I did verify Date & Time. The only thing that happened was upgrading to Catalina.

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Answer 6

chuckefus Author

Level 1

58 points

Nov 23, 2019 4:50 PM in response to chuckefus

Well, against my better judgement, I decided to upgrade my MacBook Air to Catalina (10.15.1). I was hoping that perhaps Apple had fixed this problem, or perhaps something unique about my newer iMac was the issue.

Unhappily, now my MacBook Air will not allow me to sync bookmarks.

So now I have three Apple devices where bookmarks cannot sync, just like all the other (cheaper) systems out there. Good going, Apple.

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Answer 7

pdquilty

Level 1

19 points

Oct 29, 2019 3:41 AM in response to chuckefus

Do you have the firewall turned on? (System Preferences -> Security & Privacy -> Firewall) I was having tons of weird networking problems, like Safari bookmarks not syncing, websites not loading, DNS not resolving, and remote filesystems being very slow. Then I noticed in Console under Crash Reports that socketfilterfw kept crashing. When I turned off the Firewall, everything started working. The firewall had not changed since Mojave and still appeared to be configured correctly, but something seems to be wrong with it in Catalina for me.

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Why is bookmark syncing taking so long with Catalina?

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