How to Backup or Copy Your Safari Bookmarks and History

You want to backup, copy, export, import, or otherwise move your Safari browser's bookmarks (or history!). Even if you already use a backup solution like Time Machine, you have to know where the bookmarks and history are stored in order to do anything with them. Straight and to the point, these are the simple steps to backing up or copying your Safari bookmarks and history.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. 
    

   Making sure the Safari browser is closed, open the hard drive icon from the desktop screen (or finder window). Click the Users folder.

2. 
    

   From the users folder, click on the folder with your Username. This can often be accessed from the left hand side of the finder window as well.

3. 
    

   Once you're in the user name folder, click on the Library folder. This is where critical information for many applications specific to your username are stored. If you need to find certain preference or data files from another application in the future, this is the place to look.

4. 
    

   We want the history and/or bookmarked favorites from Safari, so once you're in the Library folder click on the Safari folder.

5. 
    

   Inside this folder are both the Bookmarks.plist and History.plist files. These hold all the data for their respective functions. From here you can open Time Machine to restore older versions of these files, copy the files to another location for safe keeping, or even move the files to the same folder on another machine to synchronize your favorite bookmarks and history files.

Tips & Warnings

• Anytime you overwrite a file (including restoring from a backup), it's generally a good idea to make another backup first.

[cherold598]

on 5/3/2009 Great advice. I use Safari. Thanks for the back-up tips! 5*