I needed to ensure that our users always had a folder of important hyperlinks on their managed laptops. Even if they deleted the folder, or puffed it up with their own misguided TODO list and youtube video links, I wanted it to always have exactly what we specified; no more, no less, but without fooling around with the user's bookmarks.

So I made this. Here's how it works:

• A LaunchAgent runs a python script every time the user logs in.
• The python script looks at a data file, managed_bookmarks.plist for its configuration.
• The script ensures that Safari has a Bookmarks.plist file, and then ensures that the FolderName folder exists.
• During each run, the script moves any bookmarks from the managed folder that are not present in the managed_bookmarks.plist to a folder named Recovered Bookmarks-<Timestamp>.
  • It also adds a link to a local html page with more details for users to read.
    • The help page is dynamically configured with data from the managed_bookmarks.plist.
• It then populates the managed bookmark folder with only the bookmarks configured.

You will probably want to customize the managed bookmarks and the "Why are my Bookmarks Here?" page.

To do so, edit the managed_bookmarks.plist file to set the names of the various properties and add in your desired bookmarks. Top level keys include:

• FolderName: The name of the managed bookmarks folder
• OrganizationName: The name of your organization, used on the help page.
• SupportWebsite: The URL to your organization's support system, used on the help page.
• SupportEmail: The email address for your organization's email system, used on the help page.
• Bookmarks: An array of dicts reperenting the managed bookmarks. These will be added in the order they are specified.

Each bookmark should be a dict, with keys title and URL, like so:

<dict>
  <key>title</key>
  <string>Github for this project</string>
  <key>URL</key>
  <string>https://github.com/sheagcraig/ensure-safari-bookmarks</string>
</dict>

The help page includes an image that is left pleasingly blank by default. However, if you would like to substitute your organization's logo or a photo, overwrite the file images/avatar.jpg with desired image. If you want to disable the ellipse mask, remove the class from the avatar image "header" near the top of the explanation.html page.

There are some other sweet background images included in the images folder if you want to toy around with a different palette.

You may also edit explanation.html to suit your organization's needs. The marked script will sub in the text specified in the managed_bookmarks.plist. For exmaple, any use of the managed bookmarks folder name found in span tags with class of managed_folder will be swapped with the name of your managed folder. This way, you can change your mind at a later date without having to update the html; nor do you need to modify the html that comes with it.

I have included a Makefile for building a package with The Luggage. Otherwise, deployment is left up to the admin.

If you wish, you can rename the LaunchAgent to match your organization, as well as move the supporting python files and data files wherever you please. The Makefile documents where I put them if you want an example.

can be in. Specifically, when a new user account first uses Safari, the file doesn't even exist. The SafariBookmarks class will create one. (I don't bother to replicate the default bookmarks into this new Bookmarks.plist) If the managed folder does not exist, it will create one. If the managed folder does exist, but differs, it will get fixed.

This definitely falls into the "get-it-done" style of projects. (See the find() method...) When I get more time, I plan to go through and streamline the supporting classes and make greater use of PyObjC to better handle some of the annoying issues.

For example, most of the elements of the bookmarks file have an array named "Children" that stores the subelements. However, if the array is empty, the "Children" array and key are pruned, probably when they get compacted into binary by the preferences system. Currently this is fixed just by testing for its existence and adding it back in if needed, but I imagine making greater use of NSData types and methods would handle this.

If you wanted to be really draconian, I imagine you could change the LaunchAgent to execute whenever the Bookmarks.plist file changed. For me, once every login is sufficient.

Send me information on how they manage their bookmarks and I'll add it!

Thanks to Greg Neagle for sharing FoundationPlist. Thanks to @n33co and html5up.net for the sweet HTML template (CCA FTW!)

You may ask, why is this called Marked?

Because BM-Manager just wouldn't do.