Restore Library

The following snippets are taken from scripts/apple-books/restore.sh.

Restoring the library takes an extra step. First we need to clear out the current Apple Books library. We can delete all the library files and directories by using the paths we determined from What To Archive/Restore?.

rm -rf $HOME/Library/Containers/com.apple.BK*
rm -rf $HOME/Library/Containers/com.apple.iBooks*
rm -rf $HOME/Library/Group\ Containers/group.com.apple.iBooks

Finally, we can run the reverse rsync commands and restore the archive we previously made. Make sure to replace [PATH-TO-ARCHIVE] with a valid path.

rsync \
    --archive \
    --extended-attributes \
    [PATH-TO-ARCHIVE]/Containers/ \
    $HOME/Library/Containers/

rsync \
    --archive \
    --extended-attributes \
    [PATH-TO-ARCHIVE]/Group\ Containers/ \
    $HOME/Library/Group\ Containers/

The trailing forward-slash after Containers and Group\ Containers here is important. It tells rsync to move the archive directory's contents into the target. Otherwise, it would move the archive directory into the target.

For example, if [PATH-TO-ARCHIVE] is:

~/archives/2022-10-08--apple-books-v4.4-5177--macos-v12.6

Our rsync command would be:

rsync \
    --archive \
    --extended-attributes \
    ~/archives/2022-10-08--apple-books-v4.4-5177--macos-v12.6/Containers/ \
    $HOME/Library/Containers/  # Note the forward-slash! ---------------^

rsync \
    --archive \
    --extended-attributes \
    ~/archives/2022-10-08--apple-books-v4.4-5177--macos-v12.6/Group\ Containers/ \
    $HOME/Library/Group\ Containers/  # Note the forward-slash! ---------------^

ReadStor

Restore Library