Why is Safari forgetting my activity (history, bookmarks, etc.) after every session?

Question

On my Mac, Safari can't seem to remember any of my activity between sessions. This isn't a problem within a session, but as soon as I close the app with ⌘+Q, Safari seems to forget everything I've ever done. Most notably:

• My browsing history disappears.
• My bookmarks reset to how they were before the session started.
• Edits to my start page are undone.

Weirdly, and probably relatedly, I'm also unable to change per-site pop-up permissions; every time click "Allow", the dropdown immediately toggles back to "Block and Notify".

Why is Safari behaving so strangely? How can I fix it?

• Aivar Paalberg: This description fits Safari behaviour when always browse privately is turned on (Safari > Settings > General > "Safari opens with" > "A new private window".)
• benwiggy: @AivarPaalberg I'd agree. You should write this as an answer.
• Anerdw: @AivarPaalberg That wasn’t true in my case, but that would also fit. I agree that you should write an answer.

Answer 1

You may have lost write privileges on your own home directory. If this is the case, Safari will no longer be able to write to ~/Library/Safari, so it won't be able edit your browsing history (History.db), bookmarks (Bookmarks.plist), per-site preferences (PerSitePreferences.db), or anything like that. As such, it'll only remember your changes as long as they remain in RAM (that is, within the session); as soon as you quit the app, they'll be lost.

You can test this using the touch command. Open a new terminal window and try the following:

touch ~/Documents/test.txt

If it fails and asks you to run as a superuser, you've lost write privileges on ~. You should be able to fix this by repairing disk permissions:

diskutil resetUserPermissions / $(id -u)