My "Top Sites" has decided it is not accepting new sites. I had thought it would be a corrupted plist so, per info provided on a "Missing Safari plist" thread, two plists associated with Safari and Top Sites have been renewed. (com.apple.Safari.plist, TopSites.plist)

However, I continue to have a blank spot instead of a site image. And, if I continue to delete sites I don't want, I will just have larger numbers of blank spots.

You may not have deleted those plists as you think you did.

This post and this one by ganbustein will give you some insight.

More: I recall having had success with restarting, deleting my plist before launching the app in question, and restarting again.

Okay, I’ll give the Terminal Commands a go first but, just to be sure, here’s what I assume I’m doing:

Leave Safari closed.

Save the files:

Enter: defaults read com.apple.Safari.plist >someSaveFile.plist

Enter: defaults read TopSites.plist >someSaveFile.plist


Delete the files:

Enter: defaults delete com.apple.Safari.plist

Enter: defaults delete TopSites.plist


Do a machine restart.


If all of the above fails:

Enter: defaults write com.apple.Safari.plist "$(cat someSaveFile.plist)”

Enter: defaults write TopSites.plist "$(cat someSaveFile.plist)"


Are my assumptions correct?

1. Be sure to restart your iMac before doing anything, and to run your commands without ever launching Safari.

2. ganbustein isn't clear about whether


supersede the commands you've posted or are alternatives, so if the ones don't work, try the others.

3. You've got to enter complete paths to the files with which you're dealing, NOT just their file names. (You can do it by dragging the files into your Terminal window at the appropriate points, being careful to type in preceding and following spaces.)

4. I suggest that you run your command sets one at a time, beginning with TopSites.plist, because if you run them together, you won't know which plist is your culprit (if, in fact, one of them is).