While working on my remote work PC via RDP, I decided to link sync my Google account on Chrome so I could have all my useful work bookmarks and apps on my work machine too. After syncing, I quickly realized there are a lot of bookmarks I won’t use at work, so I opened up the bookmark manager on my remote machine and started deleting. After a few seconds everything was looking tip-top and optimized for work. I turned back to my Mac and noticed the bookmark bar looked exactly like the on my work machine. Doh! I had just wiped out all my (hundreds) of useful bookmarks in a few seconds. Such a noob move.
Naturally, (after calming down a bit) I Googled “restore deleted bookmarks Chrome.” I hit the 3 most relevant links and found the solution. Google Chrome periodically saves a backup of all your bookmarks in a ‘Bookmarks.bak’ file. Brilliant! How often does it save? I don’t know, but it should recover most of what you lose should something similar happen to you.
Here are the steps for Mac from the terminal:
- Navigate to ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
cd ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
- Find the ‘Bookmarks.bak’ file and make a copy of it in a safe place
cp Bookmarks.bak ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.bak
- Delete the ‘Bookmarks’ file
rm Bookmarks
- Rename ‘Bookmarks.bak’ to ‘Bookmarks’
mv Bookmarks.bak Bookmarks
- Restart Chrome
Windows users follow similar steps, which can be found at sites like blognotes.in.
Side note: Some sites said this only works if you haven’t quit Chrome after you’ve deleted them. I didn’t try quitting Chrome first so I wouldn’t know. :)
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