Lost years worth of bookmarks after iOS 17 upgrade and cleaning Safari History

Question

Lost years worth of bookmarks after iOS 17 upgrade and cleaning Safari History

After upgrading my iPhone 11 Pro Max to iOS 17, I've noticed the upgrade has significantly slowed down my phone, making it barely usable. The update has also caused me to lose most of my available storage space (currently 1GB available vs. 8GB prior to the update). This is clearly the buggiest update I have ever installed.

In an attempt to regain some storage space, I decided to clean my Safari history which also closed all opened tabs. I then realized that hundreds of my carefully organized bookmarks and bookmark folders collected over the years were gone. They did not return after updating to iOS 17.0.3. I suspect that they got deleted by a cleanup action, but it is also possible that the iOS 17 update deleted them.

I cannot express how extremely frustrating it is to lose your personal library of bookmarks. This type of loss should never occur simply from cleaning your browser history or the OS upgrade, that seems like an obvious bug.

My bookmarks were not synchronized to iCloud. I rely on a local backup, which takes more than 24 hours to create or restore in my experience.

Also, after losing my original bookmarks, I created a few new bookmarks and folders in iOS 17.0.2. However, after upgrading to 17.0.3, those new folders disappeared, while newly created bookmarks remained. What is going on?

My questions:

Anything can be done to restore my bookmarks without having the full backup restored?

2. What might be the technical reasons for this bookmarks loss, can someone help me to understand?

3. Can the bookmarks alone be selectively restored from an iPhone backup somehow?

Thank you very much!

Posted on Oct 5, 2023 4:54 AM

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Answer 1

Feb 2, 2024 7:50 PM in response to Charlie Oscar

After upgrading my iPhone 14 Pro from the last version of iOS 16, to iOS 17.3, I had lost all of my “Favorites” which would appear on the Safari screen each time I opened a new page. The full LIST version of my “Favorites” was still there, but the page was blank when I opened a new Safari page. I looked for many options on Apple Discussions, and on YouTube, and no one had an accurate answer, until it was suggested to power off the iPhone to see if a Power Shutdown (and wait for 1 minute) and then Power Up the iPhone would COMPLETE the iOS Update Process I had done earlier in the day. Even though the iPhone had done its own Power Restart during the iOS Update Process, the software apparently was hung up in its full installation. After Powering Off the phone and Restarting it, my “Favorites” returned to each Safari page as I opened a New page. I think Apple’s current software technicians are too smart for their own good, and are not thorough enough to make iOS software nearly flawless like it was during Steve Jobs oversight. Apple, if something is to be improved, actually improve things, don’t leave your customers (the people who really pay your salaries) fighting for their own solutions. You must DO BETTER for your loyal customers.

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Answer 2

Matthew_J5

Community Specialist

Oct 6, 2023 4:16 PM in response to Charlie Oscar

Hello Charlie Oscar,

Thank you for posting to Apple Support Communities.

We understand that you're having trouble with iOS 17. Specifically, your bookmarks have been erased. We'd like to help.

If you have a local iTunes or Finder backup of your iPhone, you would need to restore from that backup in order to restore your bookmarks, if they are not synced with iCloud.

If you'd like to investigate the potential reasons that this happened, we recommend contacting Apple Support: Get Support

To answer your third question: No. Bookmarks cannot be selectively restored from a backup. See here: Backup methods for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch - Apple Support

That should help. Let us know if you have any questions.

Take care.

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Lost years worth of bookmarks after iOS 17 upgrade and cleaning Safari History

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