Safari bookmarks are read only - how do I fix this?

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Level 1

8 points

Safari bookmarks are read only - how do I fix this?

My Safari bookmarks are read only. While I can go through the motions of adding a bookmark, editing bookmarks, or deleting bookmarks, none of these actions have any effect.

I get the following popup:

All three buttons have the same effect - nothing happens.

What I want:

I want the popup to go away completely and never be seen again.
I don't care about these bookmarks any more, they can go.
I want add bookmark, edit bookmark and delete bookmark to work.

How do I make this happen?

MacBook Pro 15”, macOS 10.14

Posted on Jul 24, 2019 4:32 AM

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Answer 1

Top-ranking reply

Marco Klobas

Level 6

8,279 points

Aug 1, 2019 5:34 AM in response to minfrin

Unfortunately, I'm afraid, probably a reset of Safari's general preference file is needed.

The problem is that the preference file is sandboxed in Mojave. It's located in

~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist

where ~ is your home directory.

To delete it you have to disable SIP:

Reboot and hold Ctrl+R, open Terminal and type:

csrutil disable && reboot

Login and delete the mentioned com.apple.Safari.plist

Reboot again holding Ctrl+R and enable SIP again typing in the terminal:

csrutil enable && reboot

Before doing this keep a copy of com.apple.Safari.plist somewhere as a backup.

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Answer 2

Jul 24, 2019 7:14 AM in response to minfrin

There's definitely something wrong, especially considering the January 4001 date...

Since you don't care about those bookmarks, I'd close Safari and delete (or move somewhere) the Bookmarks.plist file located in your Library/Safari folder (Press Command + Option + L in Finder to reach your Library).

Start Safari and it should create a new, empty Bookmarks file ready to be populated.

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Answer 3

minfrin Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 24, 2019 8:37 AM in response to Marco Klobas

Moving the bookmarks out of the way as you suggested does cause the bookmarks to be reset to their default values, however the problem remains - the bookmarks are still read only, and the same message appears about Firefox.

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Answer 4

minfrin Author

Level 1

8 points

Aug 1, 2019 2:46 PM in response to Marco Klobas

On a hunch I tried to move ~/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Preferences/com.apple.Safari.plist out of the way, and it worked without any need to switch off System Integrity Protection.

After restarting Safari I found that I could now save bookmarks... yay!

I then put the original com.apple.Safari.plist file back, and I found I could still save bookmarks. It seems removing the file was enough of a kick to kill whatever was blocking bookmarks.

Thank you for this.

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