Losing your Safari bookmarks can be a heart-stopping moment. Many of us rely on these shortcuts for work, paying bills, and other essential tasks. Don't panic, though. You can easily restore missing bookmarks using Apple's iCloud service or Time Machine. Here's how.
Why Did Your Bookmarks Disappear?
One possible reason why your bookmarks are gone is a corrupted preference file, or .plist file, that Safari refused to load when it launched. Preference files store rules that tell your apps how they should work. They can become corrupted or broken over time thanks to app crashes, sudden power outages, hard drive corruption, and more.
Problems with .plist files are one of the Mac's Achilles' heels. They seem to be a weak point in how applications are structured. Thankfully, they're easily replaced, causing at most a bit of inconvenience.
How to Recover Safari Bookmarks with iCloud
There are a number of steps you can try to restore your lost Safari bookmarks. We list them below:
Restart Safari and/or your device and see if the bookmarks reappear. If they don't, continue on.
Go to icloud.com and log in with your credentials.
Open the drop-down menu next to your name in the top-right corner and choose Account Settings.
How to Restore Safari Bookmarks with Time Machine
Another common method of restoring Safari’s bookmarks utilizes Time Machine. This built-in backup feature comes with all Mac computers and lets you automatically back up all of your files to an external hard drive. You can use those backups to restore your missing Safari bookmarks and more.
Connect your Time Machine backup drive to your Mac and turn it on. Then turn on your Mac.
Open Migration Assistant. It's in the Utilities folder under Applications.
Select the option to transfer from a Mac, Time Machine backup, or startup disk. Then select Continue.
Select your Time Machine backup, then press Continue.
If you're asked to choose from a list of backups organized by date and time, choose one and select Continue.
Select the files you want to transfer, then hit Continue to begin the process.
Once the transfer finishes, restart your computer and log in.
Comments
Post a Comment