Import/Export Safari Cookies
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I'm installing Cookie for the first time. Step 4 indicates "You can import Favorite from previously exported file." I got to Safari>File that lets me Import/Export Bookmarks but I don't see how to Export my Safari cookies. I can't find an installation help file. I'm concerned that if I don't Import anything and "check" only keep Favorite Cookies that the installation will delete all my Safari cookies since I'm not importing any and Step 4 says I have 0 Favorites. Little help please.
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Hi Joe,
If you are for example installing Cookie onto a new computer, and already have favourites configured in another computer - you could Export your favourites to install on the new computer.
you also may have had Safari Cookies installed, and Cookie can Import any favourites from a previous SC Export.
If you have neither of these, you can just ignore this option. Cookie will NOT remove any cookies until you manually remove them, or if you have configured Cookie to perform an automatic removal. (from say, quitting, or quitting a supported browser)
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Absolutely love Safari Cookies and want to upgrade--and support you and Cookie. But the question that Joe posted here goes right to the heart of usability!
There needs to be a way of automatically importing Safari Cookies favorites during the Set Up procedure. The Import/Export button is a dead end! Safari Cookies, at least the version I have (the latest I believe, 1.9.2), has no obvious way of exporting cookies!
Purely from a user-friendly (and business!) standpoint, this process needs to be transparent, if not automatic. Otherwise, you simply end up with frustrated users who will abandon the program during the trial.
As it now stands, when I look at my running Cookie, it has no cookies whatsoever. This is odd as, at one point, soon after I installed it, it had brought into it all my favorites from SC! Now, without any cookies, I'm being forced to re-log into all my favorite sites. A major nuisance!
I hope that my tone in writing this isn't too blunt or harsh. I do not mean to be (it's hard sometimes to convey tone in Internet writing). I really like the plug-in and am looking forward to trying this out. The notion of having continuous monitoring is a great one-- along with instant deletion of tracking cookies (or, at least, soon, within a minute).
One other question.
Even as I'm trying to use Cookie in this odd state, I find that it instantly deletes ALL cookies, meaning that I don't even have time to mark cookies as favorites!
I have the delete time set to 5 minutes, but I can literally watch them appear and disappear in seconds!
Hope you have some ideas about how to fix that, too!
Thanks!
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Hi William,
to Export from Safari Cookies (not so obvious... but quite simple)
you need to right-click(Control-Click) in the cookies window to bring up the contextual menu. From there you will see an option to Export Favourites.
the procedure is the reverse in Cookie.
Right-Click in the Cookies window to bring up the menu, then select Import Favourites, and choose the file you previously exported.When I initially created Cookie, I did actually include an automatic configuration, based on Safari Cookies Favourites.... not sure why I removed it? I think I assumed it was just bloat...
Let me know how you go, with the import/export.
Russell
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Russell, appreciate the help!
That is easy, but I would definitely suggest
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Making the transfer automatic
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Having a button for Export/Import in both programs.
If SC is now dead-ended (i.e. no further revisions), then at least an Import Favorites button in Cookie (which could pop up an explanation of what to do in SC) would a big help.
That would be smart to add in any case, so that people would know how to do the import in case the automatic transfer doesn't work.
Now, alas, when I did it, it did not work! It brought in only a couple of sites, none of which are my favorites! The Export Favorites message in Safari Cookies also says "Cookies will not be exported" which would seem to defeat the purpose!
I just tried it again, this time saving the cookies to the desktop, but on import, there were NONE! I think it's confusing itself! :rolleyes:
At this point, at least temporarily, I'd like to disable Cookie because it keeps blocking my auto signing into my favorite sites. How would I do that?
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The ultimate irony-- I wanted to update you on my latest effort to trouble-shoot this, but I couldn't log in to the web site here because of Cookie!
In any event, I tried Import from Bookmarks! Big mistake. I ended up with 2,092 favorites and cannot delete them.
I selected all and clicked Remove. All still there. I selected all and pressed the Delete key. Still there.
Then, I tried selecting an individual domain and clicking remove. Still, no dice. I even tried clicking a check box next to a domain name--it refused to take it. They are all dashes and remain that way-- cannot check them, cannot uncheck them.
I even re-ran the Set up Wizard, this time importing the favorites I had saved earlier.
Alas, still 2,092. I'm going to later try re-booting the Mac (I have log-in Cookie unselected) and see if that helps.
Hope you can trouble-shoot this. It's getting to be a drag having to enter my user name and password for every site I visit-- every time! :rolleyes:
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Hi William,
Disable the timer function in Cookie. (as it is deleting all your cookies every 5mins.
then quit Cookie, and delete the favourites file:
~/Library/Application Support/Cookie/Favorites.plistnote the
~which means your User folder. if you use the 'GO' Menu in the Finder, you can select 'Go To Folder', then just copy & paste this:
~/Library/Application Support/Cookie/then delete the Favourites.plist file.
when I get some spare time, ill take a look at the Export function for Safari Cookies, and make sure it is compatible with cookie.
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Russell, thanks again.
I had unchecked the 5 minute time, so something else was going on.
I also unchecked the automatic log-in, yet after a restart I was still having to enter user name and passwords at favorite sites. It's as if Cookie were still controlling Safari Cookies!
I've now deleted favorites.plist and will see how that goes. Thanks for the trouble-shooting.
It makes good sense for you to check out the Export/Import as transitioning to Cookie depends on it! I would think that some of your best market for Cookie would be those of us who supported Safari Cookies in the past!
My biggest problem is that all too many sites require Google Analytics to be turned on before one can post comments, etc.
Aargh! It did NOT work.
I would strongly recommend that you include a fail-safe way of quitting Cookie. Right now, it seems, once it's launched, the user is stuck with it!
My deletion of favorites, of course, come to think of it, means that I have no favorites-- which means that I have to go through all the log-in stuff.
How do I uninstall this? I'm sorry to bring that up again, but it is really interfering with my browsing! I'm going to stick with Safari Cookies and continue to do my deletion of cookies--manually--several times during my browsing sessions.
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You can just quit Cookie, and move it to the trash.
make sure you disable the "Open Cookie at Login" preferenceIf you want to completely remove it, you can also delete the preferences file, and the settings folder:
~/Library/Preferences/com.sweetpproductions.Cookie.plist
~/Library/Application Support/Cookie -
Thanks!
Hope you can fix whatever's going wrong with Cookie. It would be nice to handle all this stuff automatically.
Adding a feature whereby one could temporarily open up Google Analytics--to review Disqus comments on news stories and be able to comment as well--and then, just as quickly, close that off after posting--would be very helpful.
Oh, boy! Just deleted Cookie--and was very careful to delete only the Cookie and not the SafariCookie favorites .plist. Now after a restart, I've discovered that Safari Cookies lists my favorite domains, but every single one of them is 0 !! In other words, years of log-in data and cookies have been swept clean.
This is utterly dismaying. I truly cannot believe that this has occurred. It's one thing for a new program to not work properly, but it's quite another for it to destroy several years worth of accumulated data and effort!
All I can hope now is that my regular Carbon Copy Cloner backups contain a prior version of Safari Cookies favorites.plist.
Is that all that I need to restore things?
I hope that you can understand why I'm a very unhappy camper!
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Well, I have multiple backups of com.sweetpproductions.SafariCookies.plist going back several years.
I tried copying over the most recent, as well as several from across different months this year, and one year+ ago...NONE of them restored the favorite cookies!
I think that I figured how Cookie and SC work-- that what happens is that they overwrite Safari's own Cookie list. So, the key here is NOT the .plist for SC or Cookie, but Safari's own Cookies.plist that had been deleted.
I'll try an older one, from last week, and see.
SUCCESS!
It seems to me that you absolutely need to have Cookie, on its first run, make a backup of Safari's Cookies somewhere and alert the user that it's available for a restore if needed. In fact, Cookie should have a button for "Restore Previous Favorites List" to cover all disasters. There always needs to be a fail-safe, backup. But just as central is for Cookie to automatically bring over the previously-- years worth--saved set of favorite cookies. Without that, the program creates all the frustration and hassles I've gone through-- and I'm a backer, supporter, and believer in Safari Cookies.
I also agree with several reviewers on the App Store who said that the interface and the language in the interface needs improving. The phrase "Configuring Unwanted Data" gets into double negative terrain linguistically when trying to decide whether to check or not check.
In any case, now that I've figured this out, I may even try Cookie again-- yes, I'm a glutton for punishment technically, but the promise is there and I'd like to see it work!
