Where Chrome stores bookmarks — and how to get them back

Lost your bookmarks right now? Quit Chrome completely before doing anything else, then jump to recovering from Bookmarks.bak. That file is overwritten every time Chrome starts, so each launch burns your best copy.

Where the file is

Replace Default with Profile 1, Profile 2 and so on if you use multiple Chrome profiles — the person icon in the top-right corner is the giveaway.

Windows

C:\Users\<you>\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\Bookmarks

Quickest route: press Win+R and paste %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default. AppData is hidden by default, which is why browsing to it by hand rarely works.

macOS

~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/Bookmarks

The Library folder is hidden in Finder. Use Go → Go to Folder (⌘+⇧+G) and paste the path.

Linux

~/.config/google-chrome/Default/Bookmarks

Chromium builds use ~/.config/chromium/Default/Bookmarks; Flatpak installs bury it under ~/.var/app/.

Don't want to hunt?

Type chrome://version into the address bar. The Profile Path row is the exact folder, for the profile you're actually using. The Bookmarks file is in it.

Getting a copy out

Press Ctrl+Shift+O (⌘+⌥+B on a Mac) to open the Bookmark Manager, then the ⋮ menu at the top right → Export bookmarks. You get a standard bookmarks.html that any browser can import and every tool on this site can read.

You can also just copy the Bookmarks file itself — our viewer, duplicate finder and converter all read Chrome's JSON format directly, so you don't have to export first if the browser won't start.

Recovering from Bookmarks.bak

In the same folder as Bookmarks you'll find Bookmarks.bak. Chrome writes it at startup, copying whatever the bookmarks looked like at the end of the previous session. If your bookmarks disappeared during this session, that file still has them.

The catch: it is replaced every time Chrome launches. Open Chrome one more time and the backup becomes a copy of the empty state.

Quit Chrome completely. On Windows check Task Manager for lingering chrome.exe processes; on a Mac use ⌘+Q, not the red button.
Open the profile folder from the paths above.
Copy Bookmarks.bak somewhere safe first — your Desktop is fine. Now nothing Chrome does can hurt it.
Rename Bookmarks to Bookmarks.old.
Rename Bookmarks.bak to Bookmarks, with no extension at all. On Windows, turn on File name extensions in Explorer's View menu first, or you'll silently end up with Bookmarks.txt.
Start Chrome.

If it worked, export immediately. If it didn't, you still have Bookmarks.old and your safe copy, so you can put things back exactly as they were.

Before you rename anything, drop Bookmarks.bak into the viewer. It reads Chrome's JSON directly, so you can confirm the missing bookmarks are actually in there before you go through the whole dance.

If sync deleted them

Sync propagates deletions, so the local file may already have been overwritten with the empty version on every device. Two things worth trying:

Any device that has been offline since the deletion still holds the good copy. Turn off its network connection before opening Chrome, export the bookmarks, then reconnect.
A device you haven't opened Chrome on today still has a useful Bookmarks.bak. Same rules as above — quit Chrome first.

Google has at times offered a bookmark rollback at chrome.google.com/bookmarks-style URLs; these have come and gone over the years, so treat any such page as a bonus rather than a plan.

Making this the last time

Export a bookmarks.html now and put it somewhere that isn't the browser profile — a Documents folder, a cloud drive, anywhere. Repeat every few months. Then use the dead link checker once a year so what you're backing up is still worth having.

Chrome's bookmarks file