When things go wrong, having your data backed up can save you a lot of time and panic. Today, let’s focus on an easy way to backup -- and restore -- your bookmarks and passwords in Safari.

How to Backup the Data

What we’re looking for on your Mac is these two files: Bookmarks.plist and login.keychain. Here’s how to get to the files we need.

Open the Go menu from Finder. With that open, hold down the Option key. You should now see a Library option in the menu. Click on it to open the Library folder.

go-menu-library-folder

You’ll find Bookmarks.plist under

        /Library/Safari
    

and login.keychain under

        /Library/Keychains
    

. Just copy these files to an external drive for safekeeping and you're done.

How to Restore the Data

System crashes, clean OS installations, or switching to a new Mac — all of these situations call for the restoration of data from a backup. Here's how you get your Safari bookmarks and passwords back.

Copy Bookmarks.plist and login.keychain from the external drive and paste them into their original locations, i.e. where you copied them from in the first place.

If you have iCloud enabled, your bookmarks are already stored in the cloud. If you have set up iCloud Keychain with an iCloud Security code, your passwords are backed up to the cloud, too -- but it never hurts to have an extra set of backups somewhere off the cloud.

Do you store your Safari bookmarks and passwords in a location that's not on your Mac? Have you ever lost access to either of them before? Share your story in the comments!

Image Credit: dark grey keyboard red button backup folder online by Imilian via Shutterstock