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

Ok... I've tried every suggestion in this entire post and still nothing is working. This is what is happening. I have a Macbook Pro 2011, an iphone 5 and an ipad mini. Everything has the most updated software. I have an issue where i have a set of about 25 bookmarks that have repeated about 1000x. 25000 extra bookmarks. No matter what I've tried they constantly re-appear. This is what I've done. I've turned off Safari synching on icloud on both my iphone and ipad mini and have even signed out of icloud for at least 6 hours on both. I wiped all safari data on both as well. On my macbook I got rid of all duplicate bookmarks with Safari PrarieFire and have even just wiped it totally clean. I left Safari icloud synching on. I left my macbook alone for an entire day and the old bookmarks did not come back. I'm assuming icloud has synched to my macbook bookmarks in that time. I turned back on my iphone and ipad icloud synch with Safari and all those old bookmarks still come back. They don't come back on my macbook. I've tried EVERYTHING. I've completely wiped my iphone and ipad and still they come back. I'm really at a loss at this point. They seem to be stuck in the cloud and no matter what I do, even if I synch an empty bookmark file they come back. The only thing I can think of is that I have an old macbook with the same account that serves as my house server but that computer is pre-Lion and pre-icloud and has no Safari data so that can't be interferring with all this. I really just wish we could access our icloud and organize it ourselves. Any information would be very appreicated. I thought about going to a genius bar but I really don't think they would be able to figure it out.

Hello again, goombot. In this step,

On my macbook I got rid of all duplicate bookmarks with Safari PrarieFire and have even just wiped it totally clean.

I wonder if you wiped them using Safari Prariefire, or Show All Bookmarks in Safari. I recommend the latter. If you used Safari Prariefire to do this, try it again, using Show All Bookmarks in Safari this time. As before, keep iCloud > Safari switched on in your Mac. When deleting all bookmarks using Safari, be careful to check through not only the Bookmarks Bar and Bookmarks Menu, but also any items listed under BOOKMARKS in the left sidebar of Show All Bookmarks, and also click the eyeglasses icon and clean out the Readng List.

Thanks for your quick reply Jerome but I've done all that before. That's why this is so frustrating. I've synched up my icloud with my mac for at least a full day with no bookmarks at all while using Safari. Both iOS devices have been off and when I turn them back on they still grab this old set of 25k bookmarks. I can't understand why. I'm assuming that my macbook is the so-called "master" that my icloud will synch to so why if it is blank and has synched with icloud while blank, and even when i wipe my entire ipad and bring it back do the bookmarks reappear on my ipad?.. I can't figure it out.

So you've tried deleted the bookmarks in Safari instead of Safari Prariefire. OK.

I'm assuming that my macbook is the so-called "master"

Actually, it is not. As far as iCloud is concerned, all three devices are equal "peers". The only reason people recommend deleting bookmars on the Mac is because it's faster and easier. You've got more tools available, both software and hardware, such as a bigger display and a real keyboard.

I can't figure it out.

Maybe it's time for stupid questions then. Are you sure that these two iOS devices are on the same iCloud account as your MacBook Pro?

Certainly not a stupid question, but yes, they are all the same iCloud account ID. I do also have my girl's itunes store account logged in with my iCloud ID # but Safari and everything under iCloud on her phone is through her ID so that shouldn't effect anything of mine (and I even, just because I was checking everything, checked her bookmarks, and her's were totally different and fine)... so... ??

Well, all I can think of is to challenge the Apple Genius with this. I agree that although your average Genius probably won't know, try and get them to kick it up the chain until they find someone that does.

Although all those duplicate bookmarks in iCloud is the high-level problem, the more interesting but lower-level question is: Why do my iOS devices get one set of bookmarks from my iCloud account, while my MacBook Pro gets a different set from the same iCloud account? If possible, I'd try to get the Genius focused on that lower-level question. The higher-level problem solution will follow from that.

I too would like to be able to peek into my iCloud folder, and have a hobby project going on to try and do so. I don't know if it's even possible. So far I have not been successful.

Hello everyone,

I also have the iCloud bookmarks sync problem on 3 devices : iMac (27” late 2009 10.8.4) + iPhone 4 (6.1.3) + iPad 1 (5.1.1). My Safari bookmarks.plist file on the Mac, full of duplicated bookmarks, was up to 18 MB!!! So I was experiencing many freezes / unexpected quits while browsing, making Safari unusable. It was even worst on the iPhone/iPad where Safari was quiting on launch.

I finally unchecked the Safari bookmarks sync on iPhone/iPad and cleaned up the 25.000+ “NO_TITLE” or duplicated bookmarks on my Mac directly in Safari (not by editing the bookmarks.plist file manually witch didn't work for me). Bookmarks are now clean on the Mac and in iCloud.

The problem remains with the iPhone/iPad : if I reactivate the Safari bookmarks sync on iPhone/iPad, the old 18 MB bookmarks are coming back to iCloud from the iPhone/iPad. In fact, the old bookmarks are still on the iPhone/iPad, even if I've deleted them before (when I unchecked the bookmarks sync over iCloud)!

In Safari iPhone/iPad, there is no bookmark when I click on the bookmark icon (witch is good because I've deleted them). But when I try to create a new bookmark for a webpage, I can see the old bookmark folders are still there when I navigate to select the location where to save the bookmark. So if I reactivate the bookmark sync for the iPhone/iPad, the 18 MB bad bookmarks are coming back to iCloud (merge)!

Can anyone confirm that the bookmarks are not really erased when unchecking the iCloud bookmark sync, and if they are still visible when saving a new bookmark on iPhone/iPad?

Except erasing completely the iPhone/iPad system without restoring from a backup (empty iPhone/iPad = bummer), I think the solution to get rid of those "ghost" bookmarks 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 the file structure of the backups is not so “human-friendly” and I don't now how to locate the right file to edit/delete.

I can confirm that bookmarks are not erased from iCloud when unchecking the iCloud Bookmarks or Safari sync.

Deleting bookmarks manually while connected to iCloud, using the steps I gave above on March 24, is the only way to fix this. Do not touch plist files. Changing plist files behind iCloud's back will draw iCloud's ire, and cause it to send duplicate bookmarks back with a vengeance.

If you have trouble with the procedure above which I gave on March 24, there is a more detailed version on my website. Let us know how it goes.

A little question first, iGreg. You showed two screenshots of your iPhone. To be clear, what is the significant step you took in between those two screenshots, which made all those folders appear?

More importantly, there is something wrong with that first screenshot. It shows no items at all. A normal iPhone or iPod will at least show an empty Bookmarks Bar (Barre de Signets) and an empty Bookmarks Menu (Menu Signets). So, here's a wild guess. Not only was your iCloud data full of duplicates, but the Bookmarks.plist files on your iPhone and maybe iPad are not quite as they should be; somewhat corrupt, you might say. When you switch on iCloud Safari syncing, Safari or iCloud discovers the corrupt data and says Whoa! I'd better roll back to a previous version! and it digs up your old bookmarks from the archives in North Carolina.

So I'm thinking that maybe this is a rare case where you should mess with the plist file on your iOS devices. But I think you can only do that if you have the "keys" to your device, that is, have paid $99 USD to be in the iOS Developer Program. I might be wrong about that. I've never done it. Anyhow, it is actually OK to mess with Bookmarks.plist files, at least on a Mac, as long as iCloud Safari syncing is off, and you don't leave any iCloud sync data in the file before switching it back on.

But because I've never poked the plist on an iOS device, before I'd recommend it, I'd like to consider your answer to my question.

If you need and don't have the "keys" to your devices, an Apple Genius should have that capability.

What I would like to know is if anyone actually tried to follow the steps exactly as outlined in my blog post and not got it to work?

When I read things like "I tried everything, I even wiped the devices" or "I did everything you guys suggest and even signed out from iCloud" etc which means that the steps were not at all folloed exactly. For example, wiping the device may prime it for restoring, and signing out from iCloud does not at all help.

Bottomline, my recommnedation is to follow some of the very good step-by-step instructions posted already. But do exactly as posted, no less and absolutely no more. For me and the people I have instructed it has worked every time.

It still has not worked for me. Please see my post on April 28th because what was happening then is still happening now. At this point I'm just hoping that iOS7 will fix it but if it's a cloud issue then I could see still having the same problem. I've got the duplicates off my macbook and my macbook safari is synching with the cloud so that's good but still, after multiple wipes on my iphone 5 (just did one 2 days ago to resolve my "other" problem.. that's an entire other thread) and still the same. Same as well on my ipad mini... about 23k duplicated bookmarks. Any suggestions on fixing that would be great. I wish we could just modify our icloud account.

Goombot, I read your post from April 28th and that is why I posted the question if you actually tried to follow posted steps exactly exactly exactly, no less and certainly no more...

For example, you stated that you signed out from iCloud and erased the bookmarks from the device, then turned back syncing again and noticed that the bookmarks came back. That is the expected behavior using iCloud and not a bug. The "truth" resides in the cloud, not on any one device. Turning off the bookmarks syncing on a device means that you don't want that device to pull bookmarks from iCloud, not that you want to erase them from iCloud. Turning the syncing back on again means the device will pull them from the cloud again. Don't get me wrong, the duplicate issue is certainly a bug but what you describe feels like the preferred outcome and not a bug.

If you want to erase them from iCloud you will need to erase them from a device that has syncing turned on and make sure no other device will keep feeding the iCloud with bookmarks. There are several blogs that outline these steps, my link above is just one of them.

I would like to know if you follow these steps precisely and make sure you have all devices at hand since leaving even one device out will prevent iCloud from erasing the bookmarks...

Good luck!

Peter

I've always had all three devices in front of me. The issue for me is now that I have managed to erase the 23k of bookmarks on my macbook I just can't do that on my iphone or ipad mini. Selecting each bookmark on an iphone or ipad and deleting it individually would take a week since you can't globally delete booking on those. So I'm stuck. And what's weird is that why, if my icloud safari is turned on my macbook and it does not replicate those duplicate bookmarks, do my iphone and ipad mini even if they've been wiped? My macbook is synching to the cloud and doesn't see those duplicates but my iphone and ipad are syching to the cloud and do see them. ????

Is the syncing working? For example, if you add a bookmark each of all three devices, do the bookmarks appear on the other devices?

If yes, then I think your iCloud does not have the duplicates uploaded but the iphone and ipad mini may have merged the bookmarks from icloud with the bookmarks there already. The fix would be to erase all bookmarks from iCloud and sync such that the bookmarks disappear from the devices as well (as desribed previously). Then restore iCloud with the fresh bookmarks set from your macbook. After an hour or so the new bookmarks set should appear without the duplicates on your two devices.

I think there is a solution, not stated in the blog posts, for deleting the 23K bookmarks in less than a week. In iOS Settngs, in iCloud, when you switch off Safari, you're given the option to Delete from iPad (or whatever). I just tried that on a test account with 3 bookmarks, and it seemed to work.