I'm not sure what you did, but this can occur if you make a lot of changes in Safari bookmarks, then try to export additional changes from BookMacster to Safari.  To avoid conflicts, BookMacster will not attempt the additional export until iCloud has "swallowed" the first batch of changes.  Usually this takes a few seconds for a few changes, or a few minutes for a major dump of, say, 2500 new bookmarks.  But sometimes iCloud is slower than usual.

Here's how it works.  BookMacster looks for the running of a process named SafariDAVClient.  If that process is running, BookMacster concludes that iCloud is currently syncing your bookmarks, and if it continues running for, I forgot if we allow 20 seconds or whatever, BookMacster gives up and displays that warning.  To verify this, launch Utilities > Activity Monitor and enter SafariDAV into the search field.  If SafariDAVClient is still running and seems to never quit, or if it continuously quits momentarily and then starts up again after a few seconds, something is wrong.  Do you see that happening?

RsUAS wrote on Oct 28^th, 2016 at 3:08pm:


If you have BookMacster on that MacBook Pro, even though syncing is off, I think it may have been possible to create a Sync Loop which would confuse iCloud by doing a manual Import or Export, if you got ahead of iCloud, which is possible when iCloud is having a "slow day".  I think you should move that .bkmslf file out of Dropbox.  And if you do not have BookMacster on that MacBook Pro, you should still move it out of Dropbox, because in that case there is no need for it to be in Dropbox, and this will remove one possible "moving part".

I would recommend using iCloud to sync your Safaris, Firefox Sync to sync your Firefoxes, and BookMacster on your iMac only to "bridge" between Firefox and Safari.  Your system will look like this:



In years past, we recommended using Dropbox to sync between devices, because then you had more than one BookMacster "bridge" among your browsers.  But once you throw iOS devices into the mix, you need iCloud anyhow, to sync to iOS.  So, Dropbox is not recommended for most users.  We've recently revised the setup instructions in our Help Book to indicate that.

Firefox Sync is activated in Firefox > Preferences > Sync.  I think it would be a good idea to clean out all of the bookmarks in Firefox too.

After you've moved your .bkmslf file out of Dropbox, cleaned out Safari/iCloud, and cleaned out Firefox Sync, you can switch on Syncing in BookMacster, export as prompted, and I think you'll be back in business.

RsUAS wrote on Oct 28^th, 2016 at 2:23pm:


Yes, please do that.  I'm not sure what you mean, but do "set" the correct bookmarks into BookMacster.  Then clean out your Safari bookmarks in all iCloud-connected devices, as I explained two posts ago.

A common cause of bookmarks syncing trouble is a Sync Loop among multiple devices (Macs, iPhone, etc.).  Let's make sure you don't have a Sync Loop.

I understand that you have BookMacster syncing Safari and Firefox on this one Mac, with iCloud-Safari switched on.

Please tell me what other devices you have, and are they running BookMacster, Safari or Firefox?

Is your .bkmslf file in a Dropbox or similar synced folder, for syncing to other Macs?

Your iCloud is probably, as I say, on the fritz.

I understand that you the bookmarks set that you want in BookMacster.

To get iCloud straightened out,

• Run Safari on your Mac.
• Click in the menu: Bookmarks > Edit Bookmarks.
• Delete all bookmarks.
• Repeat this process on any other devices which on which iCloud is syncing Safari.  Leave Safari running on all of your devices.
• Check after a few minutes o see if any bookmarks have reappeared on any devices.  If so, delete them and wait again.

After you get a clean 30 minutes with no bookmarks reappearing – congratulations – iCloud has been reset.

Will continue in next post.

I'm a little confused, RsUAS.  When you say you "did it", did you restore from iCloud?  This is important because if you did not, we still need to rebuild your iCloud.

What do you mean by "manual backup"?  Was this a BookMacster .bkmslf file?  A .html file from Safari?

The bookmarks set that you want – they are now in BookMacster but not Safari.  Is that correct?

After switching off syncing, the next thing we want to do is to restore your bookmarks.  We have a web page that explains various methods to do this.  In your case, I would use the so-called Second Method, restoring from iCloud.  As you will see when you do it, iCloud only shows you dates and times but does not allow you to preview what you are restoring.  But since you know the exact date and time when the trouble occurred, you should be able to pick the correct one and get what you want back into Safari after one or two guesses.  This method should also rebuild your Safari bookmarks in iCloud, which I would recommend (since this is likely an iCloud issue), but is otherwise somewhat tedious.

After this, your bookmarks in Safari should be looking good.  Let us know how that goes and we'll move on to the next step.  If you'd rather move this to private discussion, we'll watch for your email to us.

Hello, RsUAS.

The Sync Log tab may  be useful in determining why and when the mess occurred, but the backups are actually elsewhere.  Please do this to get started, if you have not already done so.

• In BookMacster, if Syncing is still on (green dot), switch it to pause (red exclamation point) be clicking it.

• In that Sync Log, note the date and time that the first undesired change occurred.

I'll send more instructions within an hour, but it's important to stop syncing as soon as possible.