how do I delete my iCloud bookmarks and upload a new bookmark file

Good luck with that! I had a similar experience and no avail. iCloud has created a MESS of horrendous proportions with my Safari bookmarks in my iPhone, iPad, MBP and iMac. The only sane way that was able to workout was to turn Bookmarks off and just sync with my main machine (iMac after re-importing from a clean backup my bookmarks back into my machine). Now when I sync all my iOS devices and iMac are OK except my MBP that will not of course sync with my iMac. Not 100% but 10,000 BETTER than the Bookmarks iCloud mess. Everything else for me from iCloud works OK. But so far no words from Apple about iCloud issues... yet.

Ok, I really don't get this.

I turned off syncing of bookmark on all of my devices. Then i deleted all 18.000 bookmarks inside safari on my mac using bookdog, since thats one of the only ways to delete more that one bookmark at the time.

I then deleted the few remaining bookmarks on my iphone and ipad and waited for about 10 min.

The I turned on icloud bookmark syncing on my mac a waited a little.

Not supprised, ALL of the bokmarks came back. Now I went ahead to delete all the bookmarks once more using bookdog, this time while icloud bookmark sync is stille on.

Now, when I start safari on my mac, all the bookmarks are gone, and iclod bookmark sync is on.

The wired thing is though, when I turn on icloud bookmark sync on eighter my iphone or ipad, all the 18.000 bookmarks still ends up on those devices?!?

Now, whats going on?

Why can't I just WIPE all of those **** icloud bookmarks once and for all??

Thanks for your answer Jerome.

In fact my bookmarks are OK on the Mac and in iCloud (the Safari checkbox is active in the Mac's iCloud system prefs). Using Little Snitch, I can see network trafic to iCloud servers when I create a new bookmark on the Mac, and the bad “ghost” bookmarks didn't came back for several weeks now.

The problem I have is when I activate the bookmark sync on the iPhone or the iPad, those devices do send bookmarks to iCloud (then to the Mac also…). But the bookmarks should not be there as I erased them when I unchecked the iCloud sync on both devices and selected "Delete" (as mentionned at step #3 of your complete tutorial, and all the million ones I've check btw). All the bookmarks should have been erased but they are not. On the iPhone or iPad, I can see them when I try to save a new bookmark in Safari.

This is when I click on the bookmarks icon on my iPhone :

And this is when I try to save a new bookmarks on the same iPhone. I can see the folders containing the “ghost” bookmarks :

I would like to erase completely the "ghost" bookmarks from both iPhone/iPad, without having to restore "as new" those devices and loose 5+ years of my digital life and network access for a ¡#%@? bookmark file! (when I restore from a backup, the “ghost” bookmarks are also restored…).

My question should have been more accurate : “Can anyone, having duplicate bookmarks, confirm that the bookmarks are not really erased FROM THE IPHONE/IPAD when unchecking the iCloud bookmark sync ON THE IPHONE/IPAD, and if they are still visible when saving a new bookmark on iPhone/iPad?”

The solution would be to delete the Bookmarks.plist files directly on the iPhone/iPad, or at least in the iPhone/iPad backup files located on the Mac (and then restore the iPhone/iPad from this “cleaned up” backup). But which file to edit/delete?

Thanks for your help

Hello goombot. There is no way to access Safari bookmarks in iCloud other than via Safari. You tried everything but may not have done so in the correct order. Try it this way…

• First of all, if you have not already done so, on your MacBook Pro, in Safari, click in the menu: File ▸ Export bookmarks, or else use some other app to extract Safari bookmarks.
• On your iPad, in the Settings app ▸ iCloud, switch off Safari.
• On your iPad, in Safari, delete all bookmarks.
• On your iPhone, in the Settings app ▸ iCloud, switch off Safari.
• On your iPhone, in Safari, delete all bookmarks.
• On your MacBook Pro , do not switch off Safari syncing in System Preferences ▸ iCloud. Leave it on.
• On your MacBook Pro, in Safari, delete all bookmarks.
• Wait a few hours while you use Safari on all three devices.
• Verify that no bookmarks ever reappear.
• Delete duplicates from the exported Safari bookmarks. There are utility apps which can help with this.k
• Restore the exported bookmarks to Safari.
• Wait a few hours while you use Safari on all three devices.
• Verify that no duplicate bookmarks ever reappear.
• On the other two devices, one at a time, switch Safari syncing back on and verify that only the expected bookmarks appear.

The iOS device does not need to be plugged into your Mac. Here are the exact steps in "Microsoft Support" format, goombot…

1. Go to the Home screen.
2. Scrolling screens if necessary, find and then tap the app named Settings.
3. In the left column, tap iCloud.
4. In the right column find the switch for Safari.
5. If Safari is OFF, turn it ON and then wait for bookmarks and other data to sync.
6. Switch Safari to OFF. A dialog titled Turn off Safari will appear. There are three choices/buttons. The middle choice/button is Delete from My iPad.
7. Tap that middle button.
8. Activate Safari.
9. Verify that all bookmarks are gone.

Let us know what part of that doesn't work. I've tested this on an iPad Mini running iOS version 6.

The 9-step procedure I gave above explains how to delete all Safari bookmarks on an iOS device, because you said that I just can't do that on my iphone or ipad mini. You were correct about that, so I gave you the answer.

Well, whatever. Deleting all bookmarks on a Mac is usually easy too…

1. Activate Safari.
2. Click in the menu: Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks.
3. In the left source list, select Bookmarks Bar.
4. Click in the right pane.
5. Click in the menu: Edit > Select All.
6. Hit the delete key.
7. In the left source list, select Bookmarks Menu.
8. Repeat steps 4-6.
9. In the left source list, delete all items under Bookmarks Bar and Bookmarks Menu. I call these items at the root level.
10. Delete all items in the Reading List.

Now, I said usually because unfortunately the items in steps 9 and 10 cannot be selected en masse; you need to click each item, as you said. Possibly one could write an AppleScript, using GUI scripting, which would chunk through those all night. It might not take any less of your time, but would be educational and more fun 🙂 More seriously, if you have thousands of items at the root level, or in Reading List, there are apps which can dig into Safari bookmarks and allow you to delete all with just a few clicks. These apps must be found on the internet, outside the Mac App Store because, since 2011 when iCloud arrived, Apple no longer provides a sanctioned method for third-party apps to dig into Safari bookmarks. Also, by shopping outside the Mac App Store you can get free trials, so you could do this one-time cleanup for free.

OK, Anita. So first of all, on your Mac, you should do all the steps indicated in my previous message. Then, go to your iPhone and do this

• Go to the Home screen.
• Scrolling screens if necessary, find and then tap the app named Settings.
• In the left column, tap iCloud.
• In the right column find the switch for Safari.
• If Safari is OFF, turn it ON and then wait for bookmarks and other data to sync.
• Switch Safari to OFF. A dialog titled Turn off Safari will appear. There are three choices/buttons. The middle choice/button is Delete from My iPad.
• Tap that middle button.
• Activate Safari.
• Verify that all bookmarks are gone.

Then, go to your iPad and repeat the above steps.

Now go back to Safari on your Mac.

• Go back into Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks. A tab will open, or re-open.

• Delete all bookmarks and all folders. (This is OK because remember you'd earlier saved off the ones you wanted to a file.)

• In System Preferences, switch iCloud-Safari back on.

• Wait a few minutes. If bookmarks or folders reappear, delete them.

• Repeat the cycle of waiting and deleting until all bookmarks and folders are gone and do not reappear.

• Switch System Preferencees > iCloud-Safari ON.

• Wait a few minutes. If bookmarks or folders reappear, delete them.

• Switch System Preferencees > iCloud-Safari ON.

• Wait a few minutes.

• Repeat switching System Preferences > iCloud-Safari ON, OK to Merge, wait, OFF, wait, ON, OK to Merge, and verify that no bookmarks reappear. If bookmarks or folders reappear, delete them. (Yes, the idea here is that you are beating it into submission.) Eventually, you should prevail.

• Wait overnight, then run your computer (if you'd shut it down or slept it) for an hour to make sure that no bookmarks or folders reappear.

• Repeat switching System Preferences > iCloud-Safari ON, wait, OFF, wait, ON and verify that no bookmarks reappear. End the cycle with iCloud-Safari ON.

• On both of your iOS devices, in Settings, switch iCloud-Safari back on and Merge. Verify that no bookmarks reappear. Wait an hour or so to be sure.

So now you should have iCloud-Safari switched ON in all of your devices, and Safari bookmarks should be empty on all of your devices. Congratulations. The hard part is over.

• On your Mac, in Safari, click in the menu File > Import Bookmarks.

• Navigate to and select the bookmarks html file that you'd exported the day before.

• Verify that, after a these bookmarks appear in Safari on your Mac.

• Verify that, after some minutes, theses bookmarks appear in your iOS devices.

I'm having kindda the same problem as you guys and just want a way to reset ALL bookmarks in icloud, so that I can start with a clean slate.

right now, icloud have manage to creat about 18.000 dublicats of my bookmarks, and I have NO chance to reset this..

so untill then, icloud bookmarks is compleatly dead for me 😟

Similar problem here. Had too many duplicates so I started deleting the duplicates and then everything disappeared. I can restore what I have from a back up but when I do, iCloud just rewrites it again. I'm a little bitter.

Me too. I've got over 38,000 bookmark entries (should realistically be about 200) where iCloud has synced incorrectly. Having deleted bookmarks across all my devices except one, deleted all the duplicates etc and then re-enabled syncing I'm back at 38000 entries again. It seems impossible to delete the iCloud records. Can Apple support delete iCloud data?

I had problems syncing bookmarks on an IMac, a MBP an iPhone 4 and an iPad 1.

After reading all the good hints I gave it a thought an honestly fixed it in 5 minutes so far.

Make sure you have latest OSX and iOS software on your devices.

I switched of sync on the MBP and cleaned the bookmarks. After that I disables sync on the iPhone and iPad and agreed to delete all bookmarks when I was asked. I checked on the devices in Safari whether all bookmarks were deleted and found a few being still there which I manually deleted.

Then I deleted ALL bookmarks on the iMac and waited until it has synced to iCloud. after that I disabled syncing on the iMAC.

On the MBP with the cleaned bookmarks I enabled syncing again and agreed to merge these bookmarks in iCloud which was flushed by the iMac.

After the MBP had uploaded I enabled syncing on all devices and now all devices show the same bookmarks.

Deleted and added some and all devices still are up-to-date.

Hope this helps someone

Spinds vers interesting what you did.

Can you please tell a bit more about excatly how you "cleaned the bookmarks" MBP?

I have around 18.000 bookmarks thai needs to get deleted, and the only possible way for me right now, is to delete them one by one...

This will take me about 10 years to complete, so I raelly need another way of deleting my bookmarks...

I use bookdog to maintain my bookmarks, as it not only can check whether the bookmarks are still valid and finds duplicates, it also allows you to sort and manipulate them in an easy manner.

Unfortunately it is not free of charge

This took me a alot of playing around to get things working correctly. I was having the exact same duplication issues everyone else was having. Here's how I managed to get things working correctly.

1. Turn off bookmark syncing on every single OS X and iOS 5 device you own.

2. Select a "master" computer where you can clean up your bookmarks. Export your current bookmarks to play it safe.

3. Now clean up your bookmarks so they are setup exactly how you want them. While you're doing this make sure you deleted every single "folder" listed in the bookmarks pane on the left side of the browser window. The actual book marks that are displayed are the ones listed under the "collections" line. The blue extras being sync from iCloud.

4. Exported the "clean" bookmarks.

5. Turn on iCloud bookmarks syncing and agree to the merge.

6. Go to every other OS X and iOS device and delete bookmark on all these devices.

7. By now the only thing on iCloud will be the cleaned up bookmarks from the "master" computer. Turn on iCloud bookmarks syncing on one of your devices and wait for the bookmarks to sync.

8. Once you know that the second device has synced correctly (it will if you deleted all the extra stuff as directed) then try your next device and continue with all your remaining devices.

This will work as you expect it to as long as you clean EVERYTHING out of the folder collections from the "master" computer. From this point forward things will sync nicely.

Hope this helps!

Done that and still DOES NOT work for me! I wiped out my bookmarks in ALL my devices (iPhone 4, iPad 2, MBP, and iMac). Of course, I made backups of my bookmars prior of wiping it out and proceeded to wait 4 days to make sure iCloud had enough time to clear itself up alright. After seeing that I didn't get no more entries synched to any of my devices I proceeded to restore my bookmarks first to my iMac. Then I waited and yes, a few minutes later it synch correctly into my MBP however, when it came to my iOS devices it came over alright except it came over with dupplicates AGAIN!!!! So, at this point I just went and clean up all those entries from my iPhone and iPad. Luckily they stayed like that and no further dupplicates were created.

Now, because I don't feel iCloud is working correctly, at least for me, with my Safari Bookmarks and Notes, I have left those two apps untoched. But this week I added a new bookmark into a folder from my iPhone 4... well, guess what? The new bookmark after 3 days NEVER showed up in my other devices! Once again, I proceeded to remove that entry from my iPhone 4 and added it from my iPad 2... SAME results. Ok... the frustration continues... I removed the bookmark from my iPad and added it from my iMac and guess what happen next? The new bookmark showed up in my MBP!!!! It didn't show up in the same location as I placed it from my iMac. It showed up at the root top level of my bookmarks... so, a la Microsoft, I proceeded to move it to its appropriate folder as I have it in my iMac. So far, so good. Then I proceeded to check my iPad and iPhone and the new bookmark is NOWHERE to be found!!! Isn't this wonderful how iCloud works!??? I love the fact that it frustrates me and create unncessary work and waste of time and lack of efficiency and effectiveness!

Yesterday I added a new note from my iPhone and guess what happened... the new note never showed up in ANY of my other devices!!!! So, once again, I proceeded to remove that new note and add it from my iPad. A few minutes later... I had multiple duplicates of Notes in my iPad and the new note was nowhere to be found in any of my other devices inspite of the fact I have full iCloud features enabled! So, I then proceeded to clean up the extra duplicate entries from my iPad... and what happened next was just so kewl... ALL, I mean ALL my notes I had in my other devices were WIPED OUT!!!! But now things looks clean and tidy from my iPad!!! Go figure! I waited to see if they will sync to my other devices and NOTHING!

At this point I was so fuming you could fry an egg on my forehead of the frustration! So, I proceeded to wipe--out my notes from my iPad and waited to make sure no more duplcates were going to show-up. I then went to my iMac and from there launched TimeMachine and restore my notes and then created the new note and wala... now it shows OK in ALL my devices! So, the morale of the story for me is... don't enter Bookmarks from my iOS devices. Do it from my Mac machines... at least they'll be (after manually moving the entry from the other machine) in sync and do not add any new notes from any iOS device but to it from my iMac or MBP so that it syncs OK...

Isn't this a wonderful story of how great and amazing iCloud works? Wow... I'm even impress with myself... but I've been close in more than once occassion of using a baseball bat and my devices as a Piñata from the frustration 🙂