How to restore Bookmarks for Chrome on OS X 10.8
Note: This works for OS X 10.8.2 and Chrome 22.0.1229.94
Open up the Terminal (see this tutorial, for example) and then type:
cd ~/Library/Application\ Support/Google/Chrome/Default
and hit enter.
This takes you to the right folder — which is otherwise defaults to hidden when using the typical Mac Finder. Then if you want to restore the Bookmarks file (which is called Bookmarks), all you have to do is restore from the backup, which is called Bookmarks.bak.
Here is one way to do that.
First, make a backup of your current Bookmarks file, in case anything goes wrong. Do that by typing:
cp Bookmarks ~/Desktop/.
and hit enter.
This copies the file called Bookmark — which is the backup for Bookmark into a folder that you regularly have access to — such as the desktop.
Then, to get Chrome to use the backup Bookmarks file which it will load the next time Chrome starts up, type:
mv Bookmarks.bak Bookmarks
Which renames the Bookmarks.bak file “Bookmarks” and, in so doing, deletes the old Bookmarks file (which is why we made a copy earlier, just in case).
Now restart chrome—if everything looks good, great! Otherwise you can always go back to the way it was before, from the same terminal window that you have open by typing:
mv Bookmarks Bookmarks.bak
cp ~/Desktop/Bookmarks .
Then, if you reopen Chrome, bookmarks will be as they were before.
