An article on Macgasm discusses how to keep your Safari 5 Extensions synced between your Macs. While this is a nice solution, symbolic links and the excellent, free Dropbox (referral link if you don’t have it) provide a cleaner, transparent solution.
Here’s how I did it:
On the first Mac
- Move the Extensions folder (from username/Library/Safari/) to the Dropbox folder (username/Dropbox by default)
- Open up the Terminal application (/Applications/Utilities)
- Type the line below
ln -s ~/Dropbox/Extensions/ ~/Library/Safari/Extensions
The third step creates a symbolic link (similar to an alias in the Finder) so that when Safari looks for the Extensions folder, it is redirected to the shared folder on Dropbox. This folder will sync automatically when Dropbox is running and an internet connection is active.
On other Macs
- Delete the username/Library/Safari/Extensions folder. If you have any Extensions on this Mac not on the first Mac, you’ll need to to copy them from inside the Extensions folder to username/Dropbox if you want to keep them (if you copy the whole folder as in step 1, you will overwrite the first lot of extensions).
- Type the line from step 3 above in this Mac’s terminal application.
- There is no step 3.
Hope this helps. It’s working so far for me.
Side note: If you’re not using Dropbox you ought to be, even if this hint doesn’t interest you. It’s a great free service for syncing and sharing any kind of file (with a paid tier if you need more storage).