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Safari's bookmarks file

Safari keeps bookmarks in Bookmarks.plist, a binary property list you can't usefully open in a text editor. But macOS ships with the tool to convert it, and iCloud quietly keeps a bookmark archive most people never find.

Deleted them by accident? Go straight to iCloud's bookmark restore. It keeps archives for a limited window — typically around 30 days — and it's the only route that works when the deletion has already synced to every device.

Where the file is

~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

~/Library is hidden. Open Finder, press ⌘+⇧+G, and paste ~/Library/Safari.

Recent versions of macOS also protect that folder: Finder may ask permission the first time, and if you're using Terminal you'll need to grant it Full Disk Access in System Settings → Privacy & Security before it can read the file at all. That's expected, not a sign anything is wrong.

There is no Safari bookmarks file on iOS or iPadOS that you can get at — apps can't reach each other's storage. On an iPhone or iPad, your options are iCloud sync or exporting from a Mac.

Reading it as text

A binary plist is unreadable in TextEdit. macOS includes plutil to convert it:

plutil -p ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist | less

Or write a readable XML copy to your Desktop, leaving the original untouched:

plutil -convert xml1 -o ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.xml ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist

Useful for grepping for a URL you half-remember. For anything else, export properly instead — the plist isn't a format other browsers or tools accept.

Exporting properly

File → Export → Bookmarks… writes Safari Bookmarks.html, the standard format every browser imports. That's the file to keep, and the one the viewer, dead link checker and converter read.

Safari also folds your Reading List into the same plist. It doesn't come through the HTML export — if the Reading List matters to you, back it up by keeping a copy of Bookmarks.plist itself.

Restoring through iCloud

If Safari bookmarks sync via iCloud, Apple keeps periodic archives of them, separately from the live synced copy. Sign in at icloud.com, open your account settings, and look for Data Recovery → Restore Bookmarks. You'll see a list of dated archives. (Apple has moved this between "Advanced", "Data Recovery" and the account settings page over the years, so hunt around if it isn't where you expect.)

Restoring replaces your current bookmarks on every device. Apple archives the current set as part of the swap, so it's reversible — but export a copy from Safari first anyway, and merge the two afterwards if you need bookmarks from both.

Restoring with Time Machine

If you have Time Machine backups, this recovers the file directly:

  1. Quit Safari.
  2. In Finder, press ⌘+⇧+G and open ~/Library/Safari.
  3. Enter Time Machine from the menu bar and browse back to a date before the bookmarks vanished.
  4. Select Bookmarks.plist and restore it.

Copy the current Bookmarks.plist to your Desktop before restoring, so a wrong guess at the date isn't a one-way trip. If iCloud sync is on, turn it off before restoring — otherwise sync can push the empty version straight back over your recovered file.

The habit worth having

iCloud sync is not a backup: it replicates deletions faithfully and quickly. Export a Safari Bookmarks.html once a quarter into a folder that isn't managed by any browser. It's a 40 KB file that will outlive your Mac.

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