How Safe & Stable is "Safari Prairiefire?"

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Level 1

10 points

How Safe & Stable is "Safari Prairiefire?"

Greetings All-

As always, I've done my due diligence by researching this topic just about everywhere-including here.

What I am seeking to do is clean up the hundreds of Bookmarks within my Safari & iCloud back up location.

I know I have saved sites multiple times, in multiple folders. Just figured it was time for a cleanse of both locations to clear space and put them in areas where they can be best utilized. Isn't the alternative link by link then?

(Correct me if I'm wrong but won't this also help me with other various issues such as space, speed, etc?)

This software pops up just about every time I do a search and I was hoping to get advice from the Pro's on using it on my MBP with OS El Capitan 10.11.6. Is this the best program to use for this task, and if not - what is?

This is the link they advise I use & follow for this process - which seems very long & tedious for sure!

http://www.macandiostips.com/Mac_and_iOS_Tips/Mac_Tips_%26_Tricks/Entries/2013/1 1/13_Tips_on_How_to_Delete_Duplicate_Safari_Bookmarks_from_iCloud_in_Mac_OS_X_Ma vericks_files/Safari%20Prairiefire%20and%20iCloud.pdf

As always, any advice and info you all can provide is greatly appreciated my friends!

Semper Fidelis,

"Gunny"

MacBook Pro, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3), Primary Unit

Posted on Dec 1, 2016 9:53 AM

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Answer 1

Drew Reece

Level 6

10,684 points

Dec 1, 2016 10:47 AM in response to GunnyFitz

GunnyFitz wrote:

(Correct me if I'm wrong but won't this also help me with other various issues such as space, speed, etc?)

I have around 1500 bookmarks, my bookmarks file is around 600kb. The bookmarks also have a cached 'metadata' files to help with searches, they total 235kb.

If you clear Safari's cache you will free more data. My history is around 10MB. With about 250MB of cached metadata.

260MB vs less than 1MB, no contest — you will see no space saving by deleting bookmarks.

You may get a very minor speed update when searching but frankly I think you would have to remove many thousands of items to see any difference, even then you would probably need to run tests timing to the millisecond.

This seems to be 'busy work', clean them up if you need to do so but don't do it on the basis of improving performance - it won't.

I don't know if the app is any good, there are other tools…

http://alternativeto.net/software/bookmarks-duplicates-cleaner/

Just export the bookmarks first if you are worried about losing items the File menu in Safari will do that.

If you have speed or space issues you should describe them in another thread, editing Safari bookmarks will not help.

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