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macOS Safari

Clean DNS cache in Safari

  • Safari > Preferences > Advanced and check "Show develop menu in menu bar"
  • Develop > Empty Caches (shortcut is ⌥⌘E)
  • (Restart of Safari may be needed)

Safari Tabs Rescue

cd ~/Library/Safari

Perform backup of files before you touch them.

More records than in Safari menu plutil -p RecentlyClosedTabs.plist | grep TabURL

Inspect history sqlite3 History.db

SELECT datetime(visit_time + 978307200, 'unixepoch', 'localtime'), url 
FROM history_visits 
JOIN history_items ON history_visits.history_item = history_items.id 
ORDER BY visit_time DESC;

OR one-liner

sqlite3 History.db "SELECT datetime(visit_time + 978307200, 'unixepoch', 'localtime'), url FROM history_visits JOIN history_items ON history_visits.history_item = history_items.id ORDER BY visit_time DESC;"

Other tips

If you have TimeMachine backup, you can try to restore from it, but it doesn't work for me.

/Users/${USER}/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Saved Application State/

Backup SQLite DB SafariTabs* and CloudTabs*

  • Path depending on macOS version
    • /Users/${USER}/Library/Containers/Safari/Data/Library/Safari/
    • /Users/${USER}/Library/Containers/com.apple.Safari/Data/Library/Safari/