How to recover Safari bookmarks?

I have this same problem now.

Searching the web for help, but it doesn't look good.

I am absolutely STUNNED that Apple wouldn't create a simple fail-safe, for something so incredibly important as bookmarks! Absolutely STUNNED.

All they'd have to do is keep a small back-up cache, updated say once every minute, and holding the last 10 minutes of plists. Them, if a user makes a horrible mistake, restorarion could be one click away.

So simple, and yet this doesn't exist. - But hey, look at our shiny new iPad 17 !!!!!

I would think they're gone, but if you've not run safari since, then don't & check

~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/Bookmarks/

if there's more than the 25-30 default items, don't open any & copy the whole folder elsewhere before attempting to recover.

file recovery software? - some allow seeing the file names before paying... in which case bookmarks.plist is what you would hope to find. perhaps a stretch after using the computer.

Unfortunately, if you didn't have any backups, that data is probably gone for good. File recovery software probably won't help, though it can't hurt to try. It's possible that Safari created a new Bookmarks.plist file in a temporary folder, wrote the changes to it, then deleted the old one and replaced it with the new one. (I'm not sure whether it would use that technique internally, or would just open the file, write the changes to it and then close it again.) If it does work that way, the old one may still be present and not overwritten. I wouldn't say that's likely, though. Try it with Data Rescue and see what you get.

This should be your cue to start backing up ASAP, before you lose something more important!

I can't quickly find a mac version of something similar, but if you've access to Windows, and haven't yet deleted history as you intended... http://www.nirsoft.net/utils/safari_history_view.html allows sorting by visit count, which might cover at least your most-used bookmarks, they can then be imported back into Safari (I tried it here using winebottler, worked ok)

Hey andy, I also had the same problem however I think I found them on ~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/Bookmarks/ like you explained .. what should I do next?

Thanks

Hey andy, I also had the same problem however I think I found them on~/Library/Caches/Metadata/Safari/Bookmarks/ like you explained .. what should I do next?

Thanks

If you used Safari after the bookmarks were 'lost' - then that folder has likely already been changed to reflect only the default set of bookmarks, especially if there's just 24 in there. Worth a look though... make a copy of the folder first, then double-click a few of the webbookmark files inside.

dam.. lost them.. thanks anyway

This is a constant problem I have dealt with throughout my history of using macs. When in the world is Apple going to start making bookmarks savable to the cloud so that we never have to lose them?

When in the world is Apple going to start making bookmarks savable to the cloud so that we never have to lose them?

Umm... how about a number of years ago? That's been possible since the MobileMe days, if I recall correctly. It's certainly been a part of iCloud since it began.

Of course, there's nothing about cloud storage that guarantees the safety of your data. If you're not backing up data independently, you could still lose it all, due to the syncing involved in any cloud storage system.

Note that I've been using Macs for longer than there have been web browsers, and have thus experienced the entire history of web browsing on the Mac. I have never once lost bookmarks. If you have been having a constant problem with losing bookmarks for a long time, you must be doing something wrong... such as deleting the wrong thing accidentally, as mentioned in this discussion.

I had the same problem. Sent a bunch of my pics to the trash can never to be seen again. I used a program called Data Recovery for Mac to restore them...only thing is you'll need a PC. Plug your iPhone into your USB drive and it will appear on the left of the program...a bunch 'deleted' files will appear on the right. Restore the ones you want from there.

I am absolutely STUNNED that Apple wouldn't create a simple fail-safe, for something so incredibly important as bookmarks! Absolutely STUNNED.

They do. It's called Time Machine. It protects everything on your computer by backing it up.

If you are not backing up your computer, you have only yourself to blame. Without backups, data loss is an eventual certainty.