If the bar is gone but your bookmarks are not, press Ctrl+Shift+B, or Cmd+Shift+B on macOS. For most people that is the whole fix, and it is also how the bar vanished in the first place.
If the bookmarks themselves are genuinely gone, close Chrome completely, right now, before you do anything else. Chrome keeps one automatic backup called Bookmarks.bak and overwrites it shortly after each launch, so every time you reopen Chrome to check, you are overwriting the good backup with the empty one. Full recovery steps.
Almost every guide on this answers one question: how do I get deleted bookmarks back. That is the rarest of the four situations people are actually in. Most of the time the bookmarks are intact and something else is wrong. Pick the line that matches what you see.
On this page
This is the most common version by a wide margin, and it is not data loss. The bookmarks bar is the strip of shortcuts under the address bar, and its visibility toggle gets flipped by a stray keypress more often than anything else.
Confirm the bookmarks are still there first. Press Ctrl+Shift+O (Cmd+Option+B on Mac) or open chrome://bookmarks. If your folders and links are listed, nothing was lost and you only need the bar back.
Press Ctrl+Shift+B on Windows, Linux and ChromeOS, or Cmd+Shift+B on macOS. That toggles the bar, and it is also how it vanished: Ctrl+Shift+B sits next to Ctrl+Shift+N and Ctrl+B, so it gets hit by accident.
Open the three-dot menu at the top right, then Bookmarks and lists, then Show bookmarks bar. Older builds label that submenu just Bookmarks. Or paste chrome://settings/appearance into the address bar and switch Show bookmarks bar on.
If that switch is already on and there is still no bar:
F11 on Windows and Linux, or Ctrl+Cmd+F on macOS.Ctrl+Shift+N), where extensions are off by default. If the bar behaves there, disable extensions one at a time at chrome://extensions.An empty bar is a different fault from a missing one. The bar shows only what is saved directly in the Bookmarks bar folder. Everything else sits in Other bookmarks, a button at the right end that stays hidden until it holds an item. Open chrome://bookmarks and drag the folder you want onto the Bookmarks bar entry.
If you think of it as the favorites bar, that is the Edge and Internet Explorer name for the same strip. Chrome calls it the bookmarks bar, and the same Ctrl+Shift+B toggle applies.
This one confuses people badly. The bar is clearly there, so it cannot be a setting, and then it is gone the second you load a page.
It is a setting. Chrome deliberately shows the bookmarks bar on the New Tab page even when the bar is switched off everywhere else, on the reasoning that a blank new tab is when you most want a shortcut. So someone with the bar disabled sees it on every new tab, watches it vanish on every real page, and concludes Chrome is broken.
The fix is to turn the bar on properly, which makes it persistent everywhere:
chrome://settings/appearance under Show bookmarks bar.There is no separate setting for hiding the bar on the New Tab page while showing it elsewhere. On is on everywhere, off means New Tab page only.
The bookmarks are present and clickable, but the small site icons are generic grey pages, or one shows a logo belonging to a different site. That last symptom is what people mean by bookmark ghosting.
Those icons are favicons, and Chrome does not store them inside your bookmarks. It keeps them in a separate cache database in your profile folder called Favicons, alongside Favicons-journal. Bookmarks only reference that cache, so when it is stale, empty or damaged the icon goes blank while the bookmark itself is fine.
Start by visiting the sites. Opening a bookmarked page usually makes Chrome refetch its icon within seconds. If only a handful are missing, that is the whole fix.
If most are blank, force a rebuild. Open chrome://settings/clearBrowserData, set the range to All time, and tick Cached images and files only. Leave cookies, history and passwords unticked so you stay signed in. Restart Chrome and revisit a few bookmarks.
If that changes nothing, delete the cache itself. Close Chrome, then delete Favicons and Favicons-journal from your profile folder, using the paths in the table below. Chrome rebuilds both on the next launch and they refill as you browse. Bookmarks, history and passwords are untouched.
Do not delete those files while Chrome is running. Chrome holds them open, and a half-deleted database is more likely to leave you with icons that never load at all.
Two things so you do not chase a fault that is not there. Folders on the bar never show a site icon, only a folder glyph. And some sites serve no favicon at all, so those bookmarks keep a generic icon whatever you clear.
If chrome://bookmarks is genuinely empty, this is your section. Read the first step before doing anything else, because the most common way people lose bookmarks permanently is by restarting Chrome repeatedly while trying to fix it.
Ctrl+Z (Cmd+Z) undoes the last change in the current session. It stops working once you restart Chrome, so try it immediately.Chrome keeps one automatic backup of your bookmarks, a file called Bookmarks.bak, and overwrites it with the current state shortly after each launch. If your bookmarks are empty and you keep opening Chrome, you are steadily overwriting the good backup with the empty one. Close Chrome first. That single instruction is the difference between a recovery that works and one that does not.
| Platform | Default profile folder |
|---|---|
| Windows | %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\ |
| macOS | ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/ |
| Linux | ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/ |
With more than one profile, the folder you want may be Profile 1, Profile 2 and so on rather than Default. To be certain, open chrome://version while Chrome is still running, read the Profile Path line, and write it down before closing Chrome.
Two files matter inside it. Bookmarks is the live file, Bookmarks.bak is the automatic backup, and both are plain JSON text despite having no extension.
One note on editing by hand. The Bookmarks JSON contains a checksum field that Chrome validates against the contents, so copy whole files rather than editing them. Opening one read-only to confirm your folder names are in there is safe.
Chrome has no recycle bin for profiles, so if the folder itself is gone there is no in-Chrome route back. Two things still work: sign into the same Google account in a new profile if sync was on, or restore the Bookmarks file with Chrome closed from a file-level backup such as File History, Time Machine, or a filesystem snapshot.
This is the version people report most often after nothing, because it feels like the browser did it. Chrome updates in the background and applies the new version at the next restart, so the sequence is always the same: close Chrome, reopen it, bookmarks gone. The update itself almost never deletes bookmarks. What it does is restart Chrome, and restarting Chrome is what exposes a problem that was already there.
Work through these in order, because the first two cost nothing and cover most cases.
chrome://bookmarks before assuming anything was lost.chrome://settings/people and sign back in.Before you go any further, open chrome://version and read the Profile Path line while Chrome is still running. Write it down. If you end up doing file recovery, that path is the only reliable way to know which profile folder is actually yours, and you cannot read it once Chrome is closed.
Only once all four are ruled out should you treat this as real data loss and move to the Bookmarks.bak recovery. Remember that each additional Chrome restart while your bookmarks are missing is working against you.
A lot of people search for missing Google bookmarks, and they nearly always mean Chrome bookmarks, which is what this guide covers. The two are worth separating because the names get used interchangeably and only one of them still exists. Chrome bookmarks live in your browser profile and sync through your Google account, and everything on this page applies to them. Google Bookmarks was a separate, standalone bookmarking service Google ran at its own address, and it was retired years ago, so there is no service left to recover anything from. If you are looking for bookmarks saved somewhere other than Chrome, Google Takeout is the only remaining place worth checking.
If you were signed into Chrome with sync on, Google holds a copy of your bookmarks. Sign into the same account on any device or in a new profile and they download automatically, usually within a minute or two. To check the server actually has them, open chrome://sync-internals, go to the Type Info tab and find the Bookmarks row. A non-zero entity count means the data is there.
Now the limitation, because this is where people get hurt. Sync is a mirror, not a backup. It replicates the current state, so a deletion on one device is faithfully applied everywhere else, usually before you notice. There is no version history for synced bookmarks, so once a deletion has propagated, sync has nothing older to hand back.
Worth trying when sync has nothing: Google Takeout. Export only Chrome data and the archive contains a Bookmarks.html file, which you import through chrome://bookmarks, three-dot menu, Import bookmarks. Exports are generated on request, so this only helps if the data has not already been wiped on Google's side.
chrome://extensions and click Details on anything that organises, deduplicates or cleans bookmarks. Anything holding the bookmarks permission can delete them programmatically, and a bad cleanup run looks exactly like Chrome losing your data. If those extensions are themselves misbehaving, our guide to Chrome extensions not working covers the error messages and what each one means.Almost always the visibility toggle got switched off, usually by an accidental Ctrl+Shift+B. Press it again on Windows, Linux or ChromeOS, or Cmd+Shift+B on macOS. Nothing was deleted: your bookmarks stay listed at chrome://bookmarks even while the bar is hidden.
Press Ctrl+Shift+B, or Cmd+Shift+B on macOS. If that does nothing, open the three-dot menu, then Bookmarks and lists, then Show bookmarks bar, or go straight to chrome://settings/appearance. If the setting is already on and there is still no bar, you are in full screen or in an app window rather than a normal Chrome window.
Chrome shows the bookmarks bar on the New Tab page even when the bar is switched off everywhere else, so it looks like it disappears the moment you load a real page. Nothing is broken and nothing was deleted. Turn the bar on permanently with Ctrl+Shift+B, or Cmd+Shift+B on macOS, while a normal website is open.
Those icons are favicons, and Chrome keeps them in a separate cache file called Favicons in your profile folder rather than inside the bookmarks. Blank icons mean that cache is empty, stale or damaged, usually after an import or after clearing cached images. Revisit the sites to make Chrome refetch them, or clear only cached images and files at chrome://settings/clearBrowserData with Chrome restarted afterwards.
In order of how often it turns out to be the cause: the bar was hidden and nothing was lost, Chrome opened a different profile or a Guest window, you got signed out of a synced account, an extension with the bookmarks permission deleted them, or a deletion synced across from another device.
Bookmarks.bak is the automatic backup copy Chrome keeps next to the live Bookmarks file in your profile folder: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default\ on Windows, ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default/ on macOS, ~/.config/google-chrome/Default/ on Linux. Chrome overwrites it shortly after each launch, so close Chrome before you go looking, otherwise the empty state overwrites the good backup.
If that profile was signed in with sync switched on, sign into the same Google account in a new profile and the bookmarks download again. Chrome has no recycle bin for profiles, so otherwise you need a file-level backup: File History on Windows, Time Machine on macOS, or a filesystem snapshot on Linux. Restore the Bookmarks file with Chrome closed.
Not in the sense most people mean. Sync mirrors your current state across devices, so a deletion on one device propagates to all of them, and there is no version history to roll back to. Pair it with a periodic HTML export from the bookmark manager, stored outside the Chrome profile folder.
The update itself rarely deletes bookmarks. It restarts Chrome, and the restart exposes something that was already true: the bar visibility was reset, Chrome reopened a different profile, or sync was paused because the account credentials had gone stale. Check the profile avatar first, then chrome://settings/people, before treating it as data loss.
No, though people use the terms interchangeably. Chrome bookmarks live in your browser profile and sync through your Google account, and everything on this page applies to them. Google Bookmarks was a separate standalone service that Google retired years ago, so there is nothing left to recover from it.
Possibly, but the odds drop with each restart, because Chrome overwrites Bookmarks.bak shortly after each launch. Stop restarting it. Check the file sizes of Bookmarks and Bookmarks.bak in your profile folder before assuming either is useful, then fall back to signing into a synced Google account or restoring the Bookmarks file from a file-level backup such as Time Machine or File History.
Wenn die Lesezeichenleiste verschwunden ist, sind die Lesezeichen fast immer noch vorhanden. Die Leiste blenden Sie mit Strg+Umschalt+B (Mac: Cmd+Umschalt+B) wieder ein, oder über Einstellungen, Darstellung, Lesezeichenleiste anzeigen unter chrome://settings/appearance. Zum Lesezeichen wiederherstellen: Chrome zuerst vollständig schließen, dann im Profilordner Bookmarks.bak kopieren und die Kopie in Bookmarks umbenennen. Chrome überschreibt Bookmarks.bak bei jedem Start, deshalb ist das Schließen der wichtigste Schritt. Die vollständige Anleitung steht oben auf Englisch.
Se a barra de favoritos sumiu, os favoritos normalmente continuam salvos. Use Ctrl+Shift+B (Mac: Cmd+Shift+B), ou ative Mostrar a barra de favoritos em chrome://settings/appearance. Para recuperar favoritos apagados, feche o Chrome primeiro, copie Bookmarks.bak na pasta do perfil e renomeie a cópia para Bookmarks. O procedimento completo está acima, em inglês.