SEVERE Problem With Safari Bookmarks Sync

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Level 1

2 points

SEVERE Problem With Safari Bookmarks Sync

Just thought I'd bring this one to people's attention (as well as submitting a bug report to Apple).

I have my bookmarks synced across all devices (MacBook, iMac, iPhone) and recently I decided to tidy them up a bit. On the MacBook I started moving bookmark folders into a newly created folder called "Archive" (wanted to just put some stuff I don't use often into a folder to reduce the number of top-level folders in the Bookmark list). I did this once successfully but the second time I tried to do it Safari threw an error, something like "You cannot do this right now because Bookmarks are being synced."

OK, I thought, I'll wait.

Then the folder that I'd just moved hundreds of bookmarks into disappeared!

No undo. No CMD+Z. Nothing would get it back.

Then the full horror dawned on me - Safari was now busy syncing this across all my devices. I checked my iMac and iPhone and yes, that folder full of bookmarks had been wiped off every device. Forever.

What I found ubelievable was:

1) Safari does not keep a 'previous version' of the Bookmarks.plist file in the same way that, say, iTunes does with it's database.

2) iCloud does not actually 'back up' your Bookmarks. Whenever you edit them on any of your synced devices you are creating/destroying bookmarks on the only single copy of those bookmarks that exists

So, thanks to that nice little bug (and poor implementation of bookmarks management in Safari), I've just lost hundreds of bookmarks that I can never ever recover.

😠

Posted on Jan 4, 2014 3:12 AM

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Answer 1

Linc Davis

Level 10

209,535 points

Jan 4, 2014 9:33 AM in response to neilbaldwin

iCloud is not a backup, and not a substitute for a backup. What actual backups do you have?

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Answer 2

neilbaldwin Author

Level 1

2 points

Jan 4, 2014 9:45 AM in response to Linc Davis

I use Dropbox for everything. This wouldn't help though in this case as unless I'd have manually copied my bookmarks to a folder in Dropbox there is no automatic way of making use of Dropbox's features with Safari (as far as I can see and without jumping through hoops)

I'm not so much griping about whether or not iCloud backs up your data but more warning that there is a severe bug in iCloud sync whereby somehow it managed to destroy a folder full of bookmarks (which it shouldn't have done) and then propagated that through all my synced devices (which, technically, it should have done). At that point your are screwed because there's no fail-safe mechanisms in place as there is with iTunes (which makes a historic copy of your database each time you perform an operation that alters it).

Or alternatively, given that all of Sarafi bookmarks are just nodes in a single XML file, why not make it so that you can revert to previous versions as you can in, say, TextEdit.

I have submitted a bug to Apple by the way, I only posted here as a warning to others to be very, VERY careful when messing about with your bookmarks if they're synced to other devices.

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