Search Safari History and Continue Phone Research
An AI agent can search iCloud-synced Safari history by reading from a Mac where your Apple Account is signed in and iCloud for Safari is enabled. Apple syncs browsing history, bookmarks, Reading List, open tabs, and Tab Groups across your iPhone, iPad, and Mac automatically. Website cookies and active login sessions are not part of that sync. No public Figment Safari API endpoint exists. This article describes what the data boundary looks like, how to export Safari history through Apple's built-in tool, and how a developer builds AI search over that locally available data.
What iCloud syncs for Safari
Apple iCloud copies the following Safari data across your devices (Apple Support).
| Data type | Syncs via iCloud | Available on a connected Mac | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Browsing history | ✓ | ✓ | Per-profile; includes URL, title, and visit timestamp |
| Bookmarks | ✓ | ✓ | Folders and hierarchy included |
| Reading List | ✓ | ✓ | Saved URLs and titles; article text fetched separately via URL |
| Open tabs | ✓ | ✓ | Tabs from other signed-in devices appear in Safari sidebar |
| Tab Groups | ✓ | ✓ | Named collections; owned and shared groups sync |
| Safari Profiles | ✓ | ✓ | Each profile carries its own history, bookmarks, and Tab Groups |
| Website cookies | ✗ | ✗ | iCloud does not sync cookies |
| Login sessions | ✗ | ✗ | Session state is local to each device |
| Saved passwords | ✗ | ✗ | Keychain access is a separate path; omit from AI search input |
History completeness depends on when iCloud was enabled on each device and whether devices were online. Items recorded before the toggle was turned on, or while a device was offline, may be absent from the Mac's local history store.
Export browsing history: the Apple-supported path
Safari on macOS includes a first-party export function. Choose File › Export Browsing Data to File, select a profile and the data types you want, then save. Apple packages the result as an unencrypted ZIP file (Apple Support).
Selectable export types include History, Bookmarks, Extensions, Credit cards, and Passwords. For an AI search pipeline, select only History and optionally Bookmarks. Do not include passwords or payment data in any file you pass to an external AI service or store in a shared location. The exported ZIP is unencrypted; treat it as sensitive and delete it after import.
Integration design: AI search over Safari history
A developer-owned pipeline maps exported history records into a local search index and exposes a natural-language query interface. This is not a Figment product endpoint; it is a design you build and control.
| Step | Action | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Export | File › Export Browsing Data to File | Select History; choose the target profile |
| 2. Parse | Extract URL, title, timestamp, visit count from ZIP | Use Apple's documented export output; do not rely on internal database schemas |
| 3. Filter | Drop non-HTTP URLs; deduplicate by canonical URL | Reduces noise from internal browser pages |
| 4. Index | Embed titles and URLs; store timestamps as metadata | Full-text or vector index; metadata enables date-range filtering |
| 5. Query | Semantic search plus date and keyword filter | Rank by recency, relevance, or visit count |
| 6. Present | Surface URLs with titles and visit context | Optionally re-fetch live page titles for stale records |
Practical query patterns:
- Topic retrieval — "Find every page I visited about climate policy in the last 30 days." Filter by date range and keyword-match title or URL.
- Source recovery — "I read a database comparison this week but never bookmarked it." Search recent history for matching title terms ranked by recency.
- Reading List digest — Return all saved Reading List items, fetch current page titles, and generate a summary.
The pipeline runs on a point-in-time snapshot. For more current data, re-export on a schedule. Building a local Mac daemon that reads the Safari history database directly is possible, but the internal database schema is not a documented Apple API and can change across macOS versions.
Continue phone research: open tabs and Tab Groups
iCloud Tabs surfaces every open Safari tab from your other signed-in devices in the Mac sidebar. Requirements: same Apple Account on each device, iCloud for Safari enabled, two-factor authentication, and iOS 13 / macOS Mojave 10.14.4 or later (Apple Support).
A Mac-based integration can read this locally synced tab list without a remote API call. Feeding the current open URLs into an AI context window lets the agent continue a session you started on your iPhone — including picking up a named Tab Group such as "2026 mortgage options" built on mobile.
Tab Groups created for collaboration also sync. Reading the Tab Group name and its contained URLs lets an agent identify interrupted research, group related sources, and hand them to a summarization step without any manual copy-paste.
Pair with Notes and Reminders
Safari history shows what you found. Notes and Reminders turn findings into something you can act on. For related developer-owned integration designs, see Create Apple Reminders with EventKit on Mac and Read Apple Notes with a Scoped Mac Helper. For a broader view of Apple data accessible through a connected Mac, see Connect Apple Notes, Photos, Files, and Safari and the OAuth for iCloud overview.
Explore Figment Apple Connect
Figment's current public API covers iMessage read, search, send, and receipt. A synthetic read-only sandbox is available for Contacts, Calendar, and Reminders. Register your app and review the available scopes at Apple Connect for Developers. Manage existing connections and grants at Apple Connect Account.
