How do I permanently remove Recently Saved bookmarks from the Safari sidebar in MacOS Tahoe?

What does this refer to?

Click the date / "in response to" in the post, it takes you there.

Dec 11, 2025 1:46 PM in response to shanefromunion city

Feature?

My Friends, NOBODY at Apple reads these Posts.

I wrote in Feedback link many times. NO reply or response from Apple. I am guessing, venting out is waste of time.

What did I miss? I think I read everything and so far the problem is unfixable by the user? If there is a fix, please humor me and share. Thank you.

Thanks for the link. Done.

@cubel as has been mentioned a few times on this thread, deleting the from “recently saved” also deletes them from your actual bookmarks or reading list. so is not the solution we’re after.

Submitted same report to Apple. This should have never left the shop.

The latest update seems to prevent any workarounds, other than editing the Bookmarks.plist directly.

This is somewhat dangerous, although this will make a backup you can restore. You need to open terminal and make sure it has Full Disk Access under System Settings > Privacy and Security > Full Disk Access

Close Safari and run each command

# backup bookmarks
cp -p ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.plist.backup

# convert to xml
plutil -convert xml1 ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist -o ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.xml

# remove all dateAdded
sed -i '' '/<key>dateAdded<\/key>/{N;d;}' ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.xml

# convert back to binary
plutil -convert binary1 ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.xml -o ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

Then restart Safari and all recently added should be gone. If there is an issue then

# restore backup
cp -p ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.plist.backup ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

I figured out an easy workaround (until Apple fixes it):

1. Open Safari.
2. Click Edit Bookmarks in the top menu.
3. Click New Folder button in the top right corner of the window.
4. Create a folder called "My Bookmarks" which will appear in the left column of the Edit Bookmarks window.
5. Drag all of your existing bookmark folders into your new "My Bookmarks" folder (and sort as you like).
6. Go to the Bookmarks sidebar and click on your new "My Bookmarks" folder.

You can click the back "<" arrow at the top of the bookmarks sidebar to go back to seeing those two gigantic "Recently Saved" bookmark icons above three sections: "Favorites", "Tab Group Favorites" and your new "My Bookmarks" folder.

It works!

I moved all my recent bookmarks to a folder on my desktop then deleted those in the side bar. Good for now until I save another bookmark and the issue comes back.