Where does Apple Maps save its data and how to recover lost favorites?

Question

Level 1

38 points

Where does Apple Maps save its data and how to recover lost favorites?

Hello,

after upgrading to iOS 10.3 / macOS 10.12.4 yesterday my Apple Maps favorites were gone on all devices. I have made backups, but I currently don't want to restore my whole device.

That said: where does Apple Maps save its data, even when it is only cached? I don't have a problem reading all my favorites from an XML file if that is required to recover them. My first try was to find files with AppCleaner which can show related files to an app in order to delete everything of it, but none of the files associated with Maps seems to hold my favorites which I could then recover from a TimeMachine Backup.

Another thing to know is which service actually syncs Maps data? Is it iCloud? Is it iCloud Keychain? Which one exactly messed up?

Any ideas on this?

Regards

iPhone 6s, iOS 10.3, also on macOS 10.12.4 / iCloud?

Posted on Mar 28, 2017 1:51 AM

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Answer 1

ryuw

Level 1

14 points

May 25, 2017 2:56 PM in response to Saphired

Hi there

I encountered the same issue. I'm travelling to US and has just recently saved up several favourites ahead of the trip to plan locations I want to visit, until I realized that all of my past vacation spots have disappeared! :(

The trick that was suggested to open up the Library folder worked out perfectly for me, and I was able to restore all of my past favourites and retain the new ones I just saved!

What I had to do was to find my Time Machine backup external hard drive and do a restore on the com.Apple.maps folder from a snapshot way back before the iOS 10.3 and macOS update. My first try was to use a random February snapshot, and unfortunately this only partially restored some of my favourites - not all. The good news is that I tried the second time using a random March snapshot, and that did restore all of my past favourites!

Hopefully you have backed up your computer multiple times prior to the recent OS update which I think messed up iCloud data (due to the new file system or something). If you have saved a lot of snapshots in your time machine, my suggestion is to keep trying to restore the com.Apple.maps folder from different snapshots until you get all of your lost favourites.

Cheers hopefully this helps!

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Answer 2

Eric Root

Level 10

685,209 points

Mar 28, 2017 2:14 PM in response to Saphired

Go to Finder and select your user/home folder. With that Finder window as the front window, either select Finder/View/Show View options or go command - J. When the View options opens, check ’Show Library Folder’. That should make your user library folder visible in your user/home folder. Select Library/Containers/com.apple.maps. Try restoring that folder.

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Answer 3

Saphired Author

Level 1

38 points

Mar 28, 2017 2:17 PM in response to Eric Root

This did not do the trick, but I found the file which holds the bookmarks and was able to restore it from my backup. Sadly, when I start up the Maps app, it is reset to contain no bookmarks, even with wifi turned off. Additionally, in the same folder a new file appeared with a file extension of ".synced", so I bet there was made some transition to a new format or so which doesn't transfer properly. I will update this thread as soon as I find out more.

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Answer 4

Saphired Author

Level 1

38 points

May 25, 2017 2:57 PM in response to ryuw

This actually did the trick! Thanks! It took some tries and some random adding/deleting of places to let iCloud catch up but finally it worked.

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