Level 1

102 points

Safari - hundreds of duplicate bookmarks

This seems like an old issue, but it only started happening to me with Safari 7.0 and Mavericks.

All of a sudden, I have hundreds, possibly thousands of duplicate bookmarks.

What is worse, the new window layout of Safari makes it impossible to delete. The "old" version showed bookmarks in a regular window. Individual items or groups of items could be selected.

Now, bookmarks are only shown in a sidebar. Only one can be selected at a time. While manually deleting hundreds or thousands or entries one by one seems tedious enough, it also isn't practical. When the bookmark sidebar is open, Safari all but freezes. Everything slows to a crawl, probably because there are so many bookmarks.

I saw some pre-Mavericks advice on resetting bookmarks, but that is a problem for me. I have many folders of bookmarks that I cannot lose.

Is there any way to

1. Clean up the bookmarks without losing them all (where is the bookmark file and can it be opened/edited in another application).

2. Stop this from happening again?

Thanks in advance.

Posted on Oct 30, 2013 12:24 PM

Top-ranking reply

Joe M21 Author

Level 1

102 points

Posted on Oct 30, 2013 9:06 PM

LInc,

I read the "Troubleshooting" link prior to posting here. Frankly, it doesn't offer much help. It certainly gives no direction on what causes the problem or how to prevent it from happening again.

The "how to fix" link seems useful. However, it is based around using the "Prariefire" program to eliminate the duplicates. I have no idea if this software will work on Safari 7 and Mavericks.

What I did stumble across is the "Export Bookmarks" itme in the File menu. This allowed me to export bookmarks to the desktop. I was able to open that file with Text Wrangler.

My situation affected several bookmark folders, where one link was duplicated several hundred to several thousand times. Using the text editor I was quickly able to delete these references. The file was easily loaded back into Safari.

I also found that I could quickly delete the affected bookmark folders in Safari. If I tried to delete items in a folder, Safari would hang. Deleting the closed folder was immediate.

Now I have my "fixed" bookmark file loaded back. I am working on getting everything re-synced.

Changes in Mavericks make some of the previous instructions obsolete. It took some doing, but I think everything is in sync now.

Of course, I still have no idea how this happened and how to prevent it from happening again.

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23 replies

alecf9

Level 1

14 points

Sep 21, 2017 2:32 AM in response to alecf9

I take it back, so far it does seem to be behaving better after moving all unwanted items to a New Folder, on win10., and deleting. None have reappeared and even see same items now in Safari, IE11 and Chrome. Think will just avoid confusion of Edge until icloud supports it, ta.

Jan 8, 2014 4:49 PM in response to Joe M21

Just discovered the Bookmarks Side Bar. To get rid of it, go to VIEW and click on HIDE SIDE BAR.

Wish I could help with your duplicates because I have the same problem.

MrElvey

Level 1

61 points

Feb 2, 2015 5:43 PM in response to ezppl

I solved the problem for free with xmarks.

https://helpdesk.xmarks.com/?s=duplicate

(Or did it only work because I bought xmarks many years ago in a bundle with lastpass?)

tygb

Level 9

65,010 points

Sep 21, 2017 1:12 AM in response to Joe M21

See this thread Safari bookmarks questions

alecf9

Level 1

14 points

Sep 21, 2017 1:36 AM in response to tygb

its not just bookmarks though. any changes, eg deleting individual items for reordering the list. all changes pop back again.

alecf9

Level 1

14 points

Sep 21, 2017 5:07 AM in response to alecf9

soz got to take back my take back, they are all back again!!!! how hard can it be to keep track of a list of bookmarks. icloud seems to handle contact details ok.

soccsam

Level 1

4 points

Jun 22, 2017 1:40 AM in response to Markie Mark Mark

You are brilliant, Mark. I now have time to solve world hunger! Sam

Aug 15, 2017 4:21 PM in response to soccsam

Thanks a lot Mark! I honestly have not seen another solution which works

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Safari - hundreds of duplicate bookmarks