06-16-2008, 05:38 PM

im trying to unload data off of a dying harddrive and need to find my bookmarks for safari and mozilla where would i look for them?

i cant find them in the users folder?

pls help

06-16-2008, 06:01 PM

⌘+Spacebar

enter in the bar "Bookmarks"

Spotlight should locate the "Bookmarks" folder.

when it does, click it. and there you have it =]

06-16-2008, 06:25 PM

~/Library/Application Support

Safari and Firefox have their own folders there, complete with bookmarks. I would just backup the entire Application Support folder... it may have contents for other apps you may find you need later.

06-17-2008, 12:30 AM

Originally Posted by MacNewbie

im trying to unload data off of a dying harddrive and need to find my bookmarks for safari and mozilla. i cant find them in the users folder?

For Firefox, try this:
Spotlight -> type Firefox -> the first folder listed, which will show Firefox in Users/name/Library/Application Support. Click that folder in S'light.

When it opens you'll see another folder called Profiles. 2x-click that folder, after which you'll get another folder (with a strange name) in which you'll find a folder named bookmarkbackups, a heap of bookmarks with the Firefox emblem on them, plus a file called bookmarks.bak (backup) and bookmarks.html. I see the last two get modified regularly, which tells me they're a form of diary.

Follow the same Spotlight process for Safari until you find the Bookmarks folder. It should be under Users/name/Library/Caches/Metadata.

Take all those book mark files and transfer them to the new drive under the respective directories you see above.

06-25-2010, 04:02 PM

So, I just reinstalled my system and thought I'd share this info for restoring Firefox bookmarks. This applies to Firefox 3+. In your old user folder go to the following
Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/(random numbers/letters).default

In this folder there are 4 files and one folder

bookmarkbackups folder which contains daily bookmark back ups (though I'm not sure how to use them).
bookmarks.bak and bookmarks.html - These are manual back up files and will only have the bookmarks you have manually backed up.
places.sqlite and places.sqlite-journal - These are the actual bookmark files Firefox uses.

I copied the folder and 4 files from my previous system to the same place in the newly installed system and all my bookmarks were there. You need the places.sqlite files or it won't work. Hope this helps someone.

06-25-2010, 09:43 PM

In Firefox, you can backup your bookmarks easily. Go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks... > Star with refresh logo in toolbar (I think that's what it is) > Backup...

To restore them, go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks... > Star with refresh logo in toolbar (I think that's what it is) > Restore > Choose File... > choose the backup file you created earlier.

See here.