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How to stop webbookmarksd crashing on iOS 6?

Since I upgraded to iOS 6, battery drain has been brutal - 10% per hour or faster in standby mode.

Looking at the iPhone's console log (iPhone 4S - SETTINGS-GENERAL-ABOUT-DIAGNOTSTIC & USAGE-D&U DATA), in addition to a few crashes and out of memory errors early today, I have at least a couple hundred crashes of webbookmarksd


Of course, the phone runs warm, and literally gets (uncomfortably) hot to the touch when plugged in.


I'm assuming this is the iCloud Safari data sync process (can anyone confirm?). I've tried turning "off" Safari data in iCloud settings, but it's still launching/crashing. Plus, I really would like to have the iCloud tab syncing.


Any ideas for a fix? What's causing the crashing?

iPhone 4S, iOS 6

Posted on Sep 19, 2012 8:56 PM

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16 replies

Sep 20, 2012 2:15 PM in response to Nuje

I'm seeing the same thing on my 4S.


Went from full charge to 35% in 5 hrs of standby.


Last night, I noticed the drain and it seemed to be Safari constantly trying to snyc bookmarks and/or reading list contents. Diagnostics shows a constant stream of webbookmarksd crashes.


I've tried turning off iCloud sync for Safari, and replacing contents from Mac to iPhone using iTunes sync. It never makes it through, stopping with an error saying the iPhone canacelled the sync.


I'm also unable to manually delete the bookmarks - it says it's busy syncing, even with iClound sync for Safari disabled.


I've noticed replication in the existing bookmarks, too, whereas the Mac and iPad are both perfectly in sync.


My next step is a new install, and restore from backup.


edit: I just looked at Safari, and now the bookmarks icon has been replaced by the Reading List icon (which I hadn't seen before). It looks like there's a progress bar below it. I'm thinking I'll just let it sit for a while more and see what happens. Perhaps it'll finish, and all will be good.


Message was edited by: Chuck Gould

Sep 20, 2012 2:34 PM in response to Chuck Gould

Don't count on the "new install and restore from backup" thing working, Chuck.


That's exactly what I did (a complete "RESTORE" then from re-loaded everything from a recent backup), and that's how I landed in the webbookmarksd crash-and-try-again loop of stupidity.


I tried all of the things you mentioned late last night, and from a couple of the pop-up messages I got when trying to "push" the bookmarks from iTunes on my iMac to the iPhone, I think that the issue may lie in "another account" being associated with the bookmarks. Like, a different iTunes account or computer initially put the bookmarks there (there are some "imported IE favourites" from when I switched from PC to Mac 7 years ago that persist - not because I want them to, mind you).


And like you, the manual deletion of individual bookmarks on the iPhone doesn't work - the DELETE button registers the touch, but nothing disappears.


I can't get to an Apple Genius Bar until next Tuesday to ask them for a fix (I'm sure they have some magic way of SSH-ing into the phone to directly delete them - which is essentially what I want, and what I think will cure the problem.

Sep 20, 2012 3:58 PM in response to Chuck Gould

Well, I'm not sure if Einstein would consider me insane, but I did the same thing again, expecting the SAME outcome (a clusterfudge with bookmarks syncing), but this time - everything worked perfectly. Absolutely no issues.


All of my bookmarks are how I wanted them.

iCloud tabs working.

Reading list loaded up.

No heat issues.

No battery drain.


And honestly, I did exactly the same thing I did the first time around: Full restore, then reloaded from backup.


Go figure...

Sep 20, 2012 11:01 PM in response to Nuje

Don't you hate it when that happens? I always need an answer (the engineer in me), but sometimes you just have to shrug your shoulders and go about your merry way (unless it's your own desing, of course 😉 ).


Sometime after my last post, I happened to look at my iPad and OS X Safari - all my reading list items were gone. Tried replacing the ~/Library/Safari folder from TM backup, but they never show up - even though they are in the archive folder. If I turn on iCloud sync for Safari, they disappear again.


I turned off iCloud Safari on the iPhone. That, at least, stopped the constant update attempts. My plan is to do the restore, then recover from backup (which was done after going to 6.0, so...). I'm about half-way through restoring applications (I have to trim those back some. I have 305 installed.). Following the iPhone restore, I'm hoping it'll have its reading list and bookmarks in order and I'll be able to sync to iCloud - hopefully propagating back onto the iPad and OS-X Safari. I'll post back with results.

Sep 21, 2012 1:37 PM in response to Chuck Gould

These are the steps I've taken, and so far so good.


I disabled iCloud Safari sync on the Mac (v10.8.2) and on the iPad (v6.0). All bookmarks are fine. All reading lists are not fine - they're missing.


Restore iPhone back to 5.1.1 - stopped and enabled Airplane mode and disabled iCloud Safari Sync before trying to recover from a backup dated before the upgrade to iOS 6. After recovering from the backup, all the restored bookmarks and reading list items are back (treading lightly here...).


Next, I enabled iCloud Safari syncing for Mac OS-X and for iOS 6.0. Finally, all the bookmarks and reading lists are back on the iPad and the Mac. Whew!


After 6.5 hrs of standby, only around 3% of battery used (I say around, because I forgot to look before putting it in charging dock for a few minutes). At any rate, it looks normal again.


One other change from the original upgrade to 6: this time, I upgraded over-the-air, rather than downloading to iTunes and upgrading via USB.

Sep 27, 2012 8:33 AM in response to Nuje

I've run into exactly this and solved it by setting up the iPhone as a new phone, rather than restoring from backup. No combination of turning off iCloud and anything else enabled me to delete the bookmarks on my iPhone, although the one thing I failed to try before setting up the iPhone from scratch was to use iTunes to replace the bookmarks on the iPhone using a manual sync (in the Info pane).


I'm not entirely unhappy about setting up as a new phone, since it's nice to have a clean start on some things. I wouldn't have chosen it, but it isn't as bad as I had feared - it's nice to have an excuse to go through settings and make sure they're as I want.


I'm writing this up for TidBITS right now so you can look for more information there soon.


cheers... -Adam

Sep 27, 2012 9:18 AM in response to Adam Engst

Besides being honoured that my issue would be featured in a TidBITS article by THE Adam Engst, I had resolved to go the "set up as new" route as well, and actually did.


However, after being frustrated by yet another app not having my settings, and missing my cherished numerical cell signal strength meter from a long-ago jailbreak (and no - I refuse to accept that this has anything to do with the issues), I tried re-loading the same backup as before - and it all worked.

Sep 27, 2012 12:30 PM in response to Adam Engst

I can indeed delete bookmarks and the "sync" no longer tries to put all the old bookmarks from iPhone backup (which included a bunch of unwanted ones) onto the iPhone.


I can't remember exactly what the sequence was, though.


I might have done as you described; I may have also done a full restore again (after having used the "new" setup for a while and not being happy), then reloaded exactly the same backup that gave me the problem in the first place.


I'm actually pretty sure I did the latter, as I remember being astounded that doing exactly the same thing (loading my backup on a fresh restore) gave me a new (and desired) outcome.

Oct 5, 2012 4:09 PM in response to Nuje

Hi all, I'd appreciate your help - not a tech expert by any means. Just installed ios6 & it completely shredded my reading list - very old items (once deleted) items brought back in, while newer items from the last two days are gone. My bookmark folders themselves, however, are fine.


I backed it all up on my home computer yesterday - will my reading list be on that computer?


Thank you!

Nov 15, 2012 11:04 PM in response to Nuje

i only se 1 entry for webbookmarksd and a few awdd, daaaccessed and log-aggregated. all of them are prior to 11th november with just 1 of 13th and 1 of 14th. yet the past 2 days by battery has drained just as bad. yesterday was the worsts. i charged it to 100% twice yet it was out of battery by 11pm. this is a new replacement iphone 4 i got on the 25th of october.

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