I have deleted several internet Bookmarks. If Bookmarks are backed up to my external hard drive, how can I enter the External Drive via Time Machine to review those last backed up to confirm if I wish to restore these. Thanks.
MacBook Pro (Retina, 13-inch, Late 2013), macOS Sierra (10.12.4), Using WD My Passport for Mac Ext HD
Different web-browsers store bookmarks in different ways. However the overall answer would be the same and not as easy as would be desired.
In general the bookmarks will be stored either in an SQLite format database as used by Firefox or an XML file as used for example by Safari. These files will be located somewhere in the users Library folder for example look in the following locations.
Safari = /Users/username/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist
Firefox = /Users/username/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/???????.default/places.sqlite
These locations and therefore these files would normally be backed up by Time Machine.
In order to view the contents of these as stored in the Time Machine backup you would first have to restore them as normal via the Time Machine user interface by navigating to the relevant location and choosing when in 'time' to restore from and this would normally overwrite the current version(s) of these files. You could first move/rename the current versions before restoring a copy from the Time Machine backup. Then you would launch the web-browser to view the bookmarks. Theoretically you could view the raw XML code for the Safari bookmarks but you would have to use a SQLite database client to view the Firefox file and it would be simpler to use Firefox itself, you would still have to restore the SQLite database file first.
Your time in the detailed response is much appreciated. Unfortunately, I am very much an amateur and had, as it is part of my inputted " personal data / work ", simplistically hoped for the Ext. HD back ups examination to be as straightforward as for my Files etc. Being able to easily access and review, to decide whether those deleted were important or not to restore the full historical list.
Again, my thanks and sincere appreciation for your interest and reply, indicating that recovery is possible, but I feel that from my level of ability too complicated to attempt.
I only know that Safari bookmarks are backup in Time Machine as John says. I am not sure about the other browser, but I think they will be saved also.
The bookmarks of Safari are in the bookmarks.plist (see John for the location), so you can *restore" from yesterday or older and the older list is written over the "decapitated" plist.
Are Bookmarks backed up to External Hard Drive using Time Machine.
