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Sticky Topic How Deleted Bookmarks Unexpectedly Reappear (Read 20924 times)
Jerry Krinock
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How Deleted Bookmarks Unexpectedly Reappear
Mar 2nd, 2019 at 8:15pm
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When Synkmark or BookMacster are configured to sync browsers, bookmarks deleted in one browser will usually be deleted in other browsers.  Possible causes of this are:

Cause 1: Bookmarks changed too quickly in multiple browsers

When BookMacster or Synkmark perform a sync, it imports from whatever browser(s) have changed since the last sync.  So if you have delete a bookmark in, say, Chrome, and there have been no recent changes in Safari, only Chrome will be imported, and the bookmark will be deleted from Safari also as expected.  But if there have been changes in both Chrome and Safari within a few minutes of each other, our app will import from both Chrome and Safari, and, to be safe, not delete anything which is in either.  Because your deleted bookmark is still in Safari, it will reappear in Chrome.

When deleting bookmarks in browsers, you should therefore be careful to wait until all prior changes have synced to all browsers, taking account of the fact that, to reduce resource usage, by default, our apps wait 5 minutes after a change before syncing (thus coalescing what could be multiple changes in those 5 minutes into a single syncing operation).  Allowing a minute for syncing, the time you should wait is therefore 6 minutes.  If desired, you can change this wait time in Preferences > Syncing to be as low as 1 minute, so you only need to wait 2 minutes.

Cause 2: Advanced Client Settings (BookMacster Only)

If you have BookMacster,

• Open the relevant .bmco document.
• Click the tab: Settings > Clients.
• Click the large gear button Show Import Postprocessing (Advanced).
• Verify that the checkbox Delete unmatched items is ON.
• Done
• Click the small gear button Show Advanced Settings for the first Client.
• In the Export section, verify that the checkbox Delete unmatched items is ON.
• Done
• Repeat the above three steps for all Clients.

Cause 3: Other actors are restoring deleted bookmarks

There are other forces that can change bookmarks and cause unexpected results like deleted bookmarks reappearing:

• Bookmarks are changed while iCloud and Chrome’s built-in sync are in the process of receiving changes from other devices.
• If you have a Sync Loop, bookmarks are constantly changing, and the Sync Loop itself will cause deleted bookmarks to reappear.
• If your iCloud is on the fritz and iCloud needs to be rebuilt, iCloud itself will cause deleted bookmarks to reappear.

Of course, you should fix the latter two issues if present, for other reasons.

Summary

To summarize, deleting bookmarks in browsers usually works as expected, because you don't usually change bookmarks in multiple browsers within a few minutes.  But if you want a more sure fire method, launch BookMacster or Synkmark and delete the bookmarks within BookMacster or Synkmark.  In particular, this is recommended if you want to delete a large number of bookmarks or folders.
« Last Edit: Jul 3rd, 2020 at 11:43pm by Jerry Krinock »  

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