Extract text from WEBHISTORY files
To convert your WEBHISTORY file to another format, you need Apple Safari or other Data software.
To convert other file formats to the "Browser History Log" file type, you need software like Apple Safari or a similar tool.
The .WEBHISTORY file is a legacy data format used by older versions of Apple Safari (specifically versions 3 through 5) to store a user's browsing history. Under the hood, this file is simply an Apple Property List (PLIST), which can be text-based XML or binary encoded. While efficient for the software of that era, this format has been abandoned in favor of the more robust SQLite database format (History.db) in modern browsers.
Users typically encounter .WEBHISTORY files when recovering data from old Time Machine backups or migrating from an older Windows PC that had Safari installed. A common issue is that modern Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and even current versions of Safari cannot natively import or open these files. They are essentially locked data silos. Attempting to open them with a standard text editor often results in a clutter of XML tags that make the actual URLs hard to read.
To make this data usable, the best approach is to convert the file. For archiving or data analysis, convert to CSV or XLSX to view the timestamps and URLs in Microsoft Excel. If you simply want to restore the links, converting to a standard HTML bookmark file allows you to re-import the sites into any modern browser. For a quick textual overview, a conversion to TXT strips away the XML formatting.
Convert.Guru analyzes your WEBHISTORY file, detects the exact format, and lets you read the text inside.
Users also converted DOWNLOAD, BINARYCOOKIES and WEBARCHIVE files.
If you want to convert WEBHISTORY file to HTML, HTM, CSS, JS, PHP, ASP, ASPX, JSP, JSPX, PY, RB or PL, you can use Apple Safari or similar software from the "Browser History Storage" category. In the File menu, look for Save As… or Export….
To convert RSS, CSS, CGI, SITEMAP, PL, WEBMANIFEST, JSON, JS, XML, HTML, ICO or HTM files to WEBHISTORY, try Apple Safari or another comparable tool in the "Browser History Storage" category.
The history of Convert.Guru began over 25 years ago in California with Tom Simondi’s file-format database. A former contributor to Space Shuttle development and a software pioneer of the 1980s, Simondi established a trusted resource for file type analysis that was even referenced by Microsoft Windows XP. Today, we use modern technology to process and convert thousands of file formats while continually improving our WEBHISTORY converter.