Where Safari stores your bookmarks on Mac, iPhone and iCloud

Updated 18 October 2026

On a Mac, Safari keeps your bookmarks in one file, Bookmarks.plist, in the Safari folder of your user Library: ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist. With Safari turned on in iCloud settings, the same bookmarks are also stored in iCloud, which is how they reach your iPhone and iPad.

Every place your Safari bookmarks can be

Open the Safari folder on a Mac

1. In Finder, choose Go > Go to Folder, or press Shift+Cmd+G.
2. Type ~/Library/Safari/ and press Return. The tilde stands for your home folder.

You won’t find the folder by browsing, because Apple keeps the Library folder hidden. A second way in: click the desktop, hold down the Option key, choose Go > Library, then open Safari. To show Library for good, choose Go > Home, then View > Show View Options, and select Show Library Folder.

Why Terminal or another app can’t open it

macOS guards Safari’s data. Apple describes Full Disk Access as the permission that lets an app reach all files on the Mac, including data from other apps such as Mail, Messages and Safari. Without it, Terminal is refused when you list ~/Library/Safari, and other browsers can’t read Bookmarks.plist for a direct import. Chromium’s source code dates these file access restrictions to macOS 10.14.

To let an app in, choose Apple menu > System Settings > Privacy & Security > Full Disk Access, click the Add button, select the app and click Open. That opens every file on the Mac to the app, so switch it off again when you’re done. To move bookmarks to another browser, an export is easier and needs no permission at all.

What’s inside Bookmarks.plist

It’s a property list file holding your whole bookmarks tree. Chromium’s Safari importer, which reads it, shows the layout: Favorites sit in a folder stored as BookmarksBar, the Bookmarks menu as BookmarksMenu, and each bookmark carries its title and address. The Reading List is in the same file, as a folder named com.apple.ReadingList.

Leave the file alone while Safari is open, and don’t edit it by hand. To read your bookmarks as a list, export them (File > Export Browsing Data to File, full steps) and open Bookmarks.html in our bookmarks viewer, which searches every title, address and folder.

On iPhone and iPad

Safari keeps bookmarks inside the app. To get them as a file on iOS 18.2 or later, go to Settings > Apps > Safari and tap Export below History and Website Data; the zip lands in your Downloads folder.

Where else they live depends on iCloud. With Safari turned on (Settings > your name > iCloud > See All), the bookmarks are stored in iCloud and kept the same on your iPhone, iPad and Mac. With it off, they stay on that device and travel in its backups: Apple says an iCloud backup holds the information on the device that doesn’t already sync to iCloud.

In iCloud

Only once you turn Safari on in iCloud settings. iCloud then stores your bookmarks with their folders and organization, alongside the Reading List, history, open tabs, Tab Groups and profiles, and it archives the bookmarks automatically. Those archives are what icloud.com/recovery offers under Restore Bookmarks when you need an earlier version; recovering deleted Safari bookmarks has the steps. Apple adds that in a folder with more than 500 bookmarks, the order may not match on every device.

In Time Machine

Time Machine backs up the files on your Mac that weren’t part of the macOS installation, hourly, daily and weekly, and your Safari folder is one of them. Each backup holds the Bookmarks.plist of that moment at the same path. To browse them, open ~/Library/Safari/ in Finder first, then open Time Machine; the recovery guide walks through the restore.

On a Windows PC

There’s no Safari for Windows: Mozilla’s help notes that the browser is no longer available there. Apple’s iCloud for Windows fills the gap. Turn on Bookmarks in the app, click Install Extension next to each browser you want, and choose Merge; from then on, bookmarks you add on the PC stay up to date with your Apple devices. On the PC they’re stored with that browser’s own bookmarks, so see where Chrome, Edge or Firefox keep theirs.