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Is there a way to access the bookmarks on iCloud?

I’ve found out that the bookmarks are stored on p01-bookmarks.icloud.com. It’s a WebDAV server which seems to run a proprietary extension called BookmarkDAV. Do you think there is a way to gain access to the iCloud bookmarks this way?

iCloud-OTHER, OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2)

Posted on Dec 15, 2012 6:39 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Dec 20, 2012 11:12 AM

erwelt wrote:


Why shouldn’t make Apple your own data easily available? If their intention was to keep iCloud closed they wouldn’t have chosen WebDAV for calendar.icloud.com, contacts.icloud.com, bookmarks.icloud.com and so on.

It's all "your own data". If you can find documentation from Apple that explains how to access this data via WebDAV, then go for it. If not, you are going to be in for a surprise one day when it stops working.


When Apple publishes an API for access to some data, then you are free to use that API until Apple deprecates it. If no such API exists for the data you are using, then you are on your own.

9 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Dec 20, 2012 11:12 AM in response to erwelt

erwelt wrote:


Why shouldn’t make Apple your own data easily available? If their intention was to keep iCloud closed they wouldn’t have chosen WebDAV for calendar.icloud.com, contacts.icloud.com, bookmarks.icloud.com and so on.

It's all "your own data". If you can find documentation from Apple that explains how to access this data via WebDAV, then go for it. If not, you are going to be in for a surprise one day when it stops working.


When Apple publishes an API for access to some data, then you are free to use that API until Apple deprecates it. If no such API exists for the data you are using, then you are on your own.

Jun 8, 2017 1:37 PM in response to etresoft

Kind of resurrecting an old thread but one that is interesting to me...


Can these be accessed from a standard web browser? I use a public computer at work and don't want to have to install iCloud on the PC, is there ANY easy way to access bookmarks on icloud.com?


I guess I am not enough of a programmer to figure out WebDAV at this point, I just need to access my bookmarks at work without exporting them to a document then opening it in email to click on the long, complicated link I can't copy and paste from my iPhone....

Dec 19, 2012 5:17 PM in response to erwelt

It seems to be possible. BookmarkDAV is the name of the class that internally handles the bookmarks. The bookmarks are actually fully accessible on the said WebDAV server in the resource collection /some unique ID/bookmarks/. You can find that ID in ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist (use plutil -convert xml1 to make it readable). The bookmarks are saved in XBEL format. Last step is to figure out the naming conventions.

Dec 20, 2012 10:08 AM in response to erwelt

erwelt wrote:


What are you talking about? I just found out it does.

The names require to be random GUIDs.

I'm talking about iCloud. One app cannot directly access the data from another. If Safari currently has a hacked-up design that allows you to go into its bookmarks, that would probably be considered a bug and not something you should depend on having.

Is there a way to access the bookmarks on iCloud?

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