Syncing of Safari bookmarks completely stopped working

[radiuz]

So I have this problem with my MacBook 16" where Safari bookmarks no longer syncs between my devices. It worked for a while but now it's completely broken and I have no idea how to fix it. Apples support page is of no help with the usual "make sure you are signed in with the same iCloud account" but this is not the problem so wondering if other have the same issue and how did you solve it?

Ironically, I can sync my Safari bookmarks on my iPhone X just fine with my Windows PC running Firefox but with the Macbook, forget it..

And before you ask, yes I have unchecked the Safari syncing in iCloud settings and then re-enable it but to no help. Worth mentioning is also that if I add new bookmarks locally on my Macbook, they will stay as long as I have Safari open and running but as soon as I close it down, those new bookmarks are now gone. SMH..

 

[Artiste212]

That last paragraph seems to say that your Safari bookmarks file on your Mac is corrupted and unable to store the bookmarks, so it can't even be synced.

Your best bet is to export your bookmarks to a new file manually and then quit Safari. Delete the original bookmarks file. Reopen Safari, and manually delete the bookmarks it automatically shows. Then import your exported bookmarks.

[NOTE: You should probably check your exported bookmarks file before deleting the original one, just to make sure the export worked. You can do it by going to Safari > File > Open File... from Safari. You'll see a page with a lot of HTML stuff, but if you scroll through it, you'll (hopefully) see all your bookmarks. If you think your bookmarks aren't even exporting, your only hope is to make sure you have your bookmarks in iCloud (on your iPhone, iPad, etc.). If your devices can't see the bookmarks, take screenshots of you bookmarks in Mac Safari - before you go through this process!]

 

[radiuz]

That last paragraph seems to say that your Safari bookmarks file on your Mac is corrupted and unable to store the bookmarks, so it can't even be synced.

Your best bet is to export your bookmarks to a new file manually and then quit Safari. Delete the original bookmarks file. Reopen Safari, and manually delete the bookmarks it automatically shows. Then import your exported bookmarks.

[NOTE: You should probably check your exported bookmarks file before deleting the original one, just to make sure the export worked. You can do it by going to Safari > File > Open File... from Safari. You'll see a page with a lot of HTML stuff, but if you scroll through it, you'll (hopefully) see all your bookmarks. If you think your bookmarks aren't even exporting, your only hope is to make sure you have your bookmarks in iCloud (on your iPhone, iPad, etc.). If your devices can't see the bookmarks, take screenshots of you bookmarks in Mac Safari - before you go through this process!]

Yeah, I will try this thanks. I know for sure the problem is with the Macbook because syncing between iPhone and PC works and has worked flawlessly so the bookmarks are most definitely in iCloud.

Will start with exporting from Macbook and then clean the old ones (locally) and after this, try importing the prior export file and see what happens. Can also try to sync from iCloud after cleaning out all the locally stored bookmarks on MBP.

 

[bogdanw]

You can try to restart the sync agent, from Terminal

launchctl kickstart -k gui/501/com.apple.SafariBookmarksSyncAgent

 

[radiuz]

Quick update to this problem, so i tried the following:

1. Switch off iCloud Safari syncing
2. Clean all bookmarks locally on the Macbook (after making a copy of course)
3. Re-start computer and turn iCloud syncing back on. It ask me to merge locally with cloud and press ok.
4. Open Safari on Macbook, now all the bookmarks from iCloud are there and syncing between the devices seems to work again as well.

Very odd..

 

[radiuz]

You can try to restart the sync agent, from Terminal

launchctl kickstart -k gui/501/com.apple.SafariBookmarksSyncAgent

Thanks, i´ll try this first if the problem reoccurs but for now it seems like my solution above did the trick.

 

[mollyc]

Quick update to this problem, so i tried the following:

1. Switch off iCloud Safari syncing
2. Clean all bookmarks locally on the Macbook (after making a copy of course)
3. Re-start computer and turn iCloud syncing back on. It ask me to merge locally with cloud and press ok.
4. Open Safari on Macbook, now all the bookmarks from iCloud are there and syncing between the devices seems to work again as well.

Very odd..

i did basically this same procedure on my phone yesterday for the same thing. my mba and imac were syncing but my phone didn’t show those devices nor did the computers see my phone. but doing the equivalent process on my phone got all three to sync again.

 

[Artiste212]

Quick update to this problem, so i tried the following:

1. Switch off iCloud Safari syncing
2. Clean all bookmarks locally on the Macbook (after making a copy of course)
3. Re-start computer and turn iCloud syncing back on. It ask me to merge locally with cloud and press ok.
4. Open Safari on Macbook, now all the bookmarks from iCloud are there and syncing between the devices seems to work again as well.

Very odd..

It's not odd, actually. The bookmarks file on the Mac was corrupted. It couldn't sync because it couldn't be written to. Deleting that file allowed sync to use all the bookmarks that were in iCloud - which is what would have happend, if the file on your Mac wasn't rotten from being corrupted.

Happy you got it working.

 

[radiuz]

So after a month since i started this thread, i still have this problem but i have done some more testing and found some interesting observations,

1. The syncing of bookmarks doesn't work as long as i don't actively make a change to the bookmarks but as soon as i make a change, for example add a new one, the syncing will immediately start downloading the latest set of bookmarks from iCloud.

2. It seems this is Monterey related issue because on my older Macbook Pro with Catalina, the syncing works flawlessly on Safari as soon as i open the browser.

So it appears there is some issue with the sync agent in Safari and I'm a bit surprised not seeing more reports of this problem from other users.
So right now, i have to first open the browser and then do a change to the bookmarks for the syncing to work. Not an ideal solution..