Bookmarks trick with MobileMe

[mcdj]

I don't want/need all my desktop bookmarks on my iPhone. I have a separate set of bookmarks just for the iPhone, organized for faster access, and loaded with stuff I have no use for at home. If you're like me (hopefully not), this tip might help.

Unfortunately iTunes doesn't let you choose a specific bookmarks.plist to sync to the phone. It uses Safari's bookmarks, period. To get around this, up until now, syncing bookmarks with iTunes was a convoluted process of moving my desktop bookmarks out of ~Library/Safari to someplace safe, then moving a previously created copy of my iPhone specific bookmarks back into ~Library/Safari, then syncing, then moving the iPhone bookmarks out of ~Library/Safari and replacing the original desktop bookmarks back into the ~Library. Annoying and confusing. (I used color labels to differentiate the files)

Today, I did my standard bookmarks Library dance, but for some reason iTunes decided to replace the bookmarks on my phone instead of sync. I lost several bookmarks I had made on the phone since the last time I did the dance. Grr.

Frustrated with this, and tired of doing the swap, I figured I'd see what would happen if I synced my iPhone bookmarks to MobileMe. With my iPhone-specific bookmarks in place in the ~Library, I synced my desktop to MobileMe, checking "Bookmarks" in the sync options, and then checked bookmark sync to MobileMe on the iPhone. I got a popup on the phone saying all my bookmarks would be replaced with those on MobileMe.

It worked as expected. All my iPhone specific bookmarks were back on the phone.

Then I turned off MobileMe bookmark sync on my computer, and replaced my normal desktop bookmarks in the Library. I synced again with MobileMe, just to be sure I wasn't still syncing the desktop bookmarks.

Then I went into the iPhone and turned off bookmark sync. I was left with no bookmarks as expected. I turned it back on, and voila, all my iPhone specific bookmarks were in place. To test it further, I created a new bookmark from a random page on the iPhone, waited a bit, then turned off syncing in Settings. All my bookmarks again disappeared. I toggled the sync back on, and my bookmarks reappeared, including the random bookmark I had just added. This means the phone and MobileMe sync bookmarks exclusively, leaving the desktop bookmarks out of the picture. No more ~Library/Safari bookmarks swapping.

Happy guy.

I'm sure no one cares.

 

[mavis]

Wirelessly posted (iPhone 3G (white): Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_0_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5B108 Safari/525.20)

Funny, I found this too - I was pretty excited about it. I'm sure you and aren't the only ones! Thanks for posting!

 

[Small White Car]

This sounds like a lot of work.

I simply made a folder at the top of my bookmarks list called 'iPhone.' On my Mac, it's at the top and I just ignore it.

On my iPhone, I do everything in there. Because I'm always in there, I never see all the other folders that are syncing. I go up the menu system until I reach the 'iPhone' folder, then I stop hitting back!

All my other desktop bookmarks are in there, but since I never hit 'back' to get up to that level, I never see them.

Never see them = Same as not being there at all.
At least, that's how I see it.

 

[sr5878]

why do you need to sync bookmarks that are for your phone only? if the two sets of bookmarks are different, why sync at all?

 

[mcdj]

This sounds like a lot of work.

I simply made a folder at the top of my bookmarks list called 'iPhone.' On my Mac, it's at the top and I just ignore it.

On my iPhone, I do everything in there. Because I'm always in there, I never see all the other folders that are syncing. I go up the menu system until I reach the 'iPhone' folder, then I stop hitting back!

All my other desktop bookmarks are in there, but since I never hit 'back' to get up to that level, I never see them.

Never see them = Same as not being there at all.
At least, that's how I see it.

You make a decent point. I guess after having to restore my desktop bookmarks from a backup after having them mysteriously deleted by a sync last year, I'm a bit gun shy. My desktop bookmarks are far more imporant than my iPhone bookmarks and I prefer to keep them quarantined and out of the loop.

 

[mcdj]

why do you need to sync bookmarks that are for your phone only? if the two sets of bookmarks are different, why sync at all?

Because it's the only way to back them up?

 

[sr5878]

Because it's the only way to back them up?

ooooohhh, i gotcha.

don't they get backed up with the big "iphone backup" when you first plug in, though?

 

[Small White Car]

Because it's the only way to back them up?

Well, even more than that fact, I find I sometimes want desktop links on my iPhone and I sometimes want my iPhone links on my desktop.

It's just that MOST of the time, I don't want to deal with them all. This is why I like my method. It gives me the ability to look at anything anywhere if I want to, but it keeps the stuff I don't want out of the way the rest of the time.

don't they get backed up with the big "iphone backup" when you first plug in, though?

I strongly suspect this is correct, but like I'm saying here, this isn't my primary motivation. If backing up is all the O.P. cares about, he should investigate this idea further. (Although there is something to be said for automatic web-backups. This method ONLY protects after you've synced with a cable, and a house-fire or computer theft would destroy your backup. Mobileme syncing solves both of those issues.)