Synchronize Your Bookmarks Between Different Computers
Posted by Andy Atkinson on 11/27/05 in Freeware, Open Source, Software, Tips
Keeping your bookmarks synchronized between different computers is difficult since operating systems represent data differently. While social bookmarking sites like digg and del.icio.us, or RSS readers like Google’s Personalized Home and Bloglines let account holders store links and feeds to their favorite sites, I’ve found that I still want to use traditional bookmarks, but am frustrated when I move between my different computers and they are not there. With the Bookmarks Synchronizer Firefox extension and an FTP account, this problem goes away. If you don’t have access to an FTP server, I’ll show you how to set up a free account at Ripway that you can use with this extension. I’ve successfully used Bookmarks Synchronizer with the latest version of Firefox, on Windows and OS X. The extension can even be configured to upload bookmarks when you close Firefox, and download them when you open it–making it even more convenient.
1. Installing Bookmarks Synchronizer
The first thing you will have to do is visit the Mozilla extensions page and either search for “Bookmarks Synchronizer” or click this link. At the time of this writing I am running Firefox 1.0.7 for Windows and OS X, and at least one user has had a successful installation with 1.5RC. If you can’t remember that URL, just open Firefox and click the Tools menu, then Extensions, then “Get More Extensions”.
After you click the Install Now icon and restart Firefox, you will see Synchronize Bookmarks under the Bookmarks menu. If you have access to a WebDAV server, you can use that, but I’m guessing most people will use FTP. There is no native support for SFTP, which may present a problem if you have access to an FTP server that only operates over the secure port. If that is the case, or if you do not have an FTP account, I recommend setting up an account at Ripway.
Synchronizing my bookmarks (uploading and downloading) was very fast, usually taking less than one second. The extension displays a small pop-up box that disappears when the operation is complete.
2. Synchronizing with an FTP account
I’ve got an FTP account, but it requires SFTP and this Firefox extension does not support secure FTP as of this writing. Thus I went hunting for free web hosting with FTP access. I found a lot of places that offer free photo storage, but limit which types of files you can upload, usually to GIF or JPG. Since this extension stores your bookmarks as an XML file, free photo storage won’t work.
Ripway lets you set up an account with FTP access quickly. The free version only gives you 30MB of storage, but the account is easy to set up and doesn’t require real information or any annoying verification, so it’s worth your time to set up an account even if you use it for nothing but bookmark synchronization.
If you create an account with Ripway, all you need to supply is ftphost.ripway.com for the host, your username and password. I recommend using the default file name and path to keep things simple. To make things easier, you can set up the extension to automatically download your bookmarks when Firefox starts, or upload your bookmarks when Firefox exits.
3. Saving Existing Bookmarks
When you synchronize your bookmarks, this extension will overwrite any existing bookmarks you had saved, unless you choose Merge data into existing bookmarks. If you want to save what you have, make sure you choose Export under Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks to save a copy of your bookmarks to a file, which you can later “Import.” If you have bookmarks that you want to keep, you can follow this process:
- Export your bookmarks on the second computer
- Download your bookmarks from the first computer (using Download under Synchronize Bookmarks)
- Import the file you just exported
- Remove any duplicates
- Upload your bookmarks
Now you can download your bookmarks on the first machine. If you have several computers, repeat the steps above for each of them. If you choose the merge option listed above, you can ignore this list.
To download this extension directly click here. Make sure to check out all of the Firefox extensions that are available, found at addons.mozilla.org/extensions.
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Matt Thommes | Nov 28, 2005 | Reply
This is perfect. My usual method (up until now) has been simply exporting the HTML bookmark list, from Firefox, and then saving it into my iDisk account, which I can access from any computer (Windows or Mac). Then I just re-import the bookmarks each time I made a change/addition. Forget that! This idea is much better…
ilya | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Wicked, i was doin the same as Matt, now no more. Also this is awesome for my notemanager project. Online bookmark synchronization. Wicked article, and awesome site. Im bookmarking it.
ronald | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
What about Yahoo Companion, very easy to have your bookmarks online.
Zero Cool | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Awesome! Thanks so much. Very useful @ my work place.
Gabor | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Great, but not “Feature-complete”
When it includes my adblock patterns (or the prefs.js in general) and saved passwords (signons.txt), it’ll be as good as Roaming Profiles.
boris | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
If anyone is interested I have a PHP file that will parse the uploaded XML file from this extension. This basically allows you to access your bookmarks from anywhere on any browser. If your interested in a copy drop me an email @ y393ichkh9ofl7r@jetable.com (this email will expire by 5th Dec 2005).
forevernhim | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
It doesn’t work with 1.5…..
Ricardo Lucas | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Hi there…
For me the best way for use bookmarks in another computers is: http://www.spurl.com Have extension to Mozilla, Ie etc…
Please try it!
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Good tool but BE CAREFULL! I lost 6 months worth of painstakingly chosen bookmarks when I decided to synch a new computer with this utility. This computer’s Firefox had no bookmarks and when I went to synch, it cleared out the xbel.xml (the file this utility uses) on my server. So make sure to back this file up from time-to-time.
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Directly off mozilla update page, instructions for making this work in 1.5 RC3:
If you haven’t got this one already, install the Nightly Tester Tools from https://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=958 then, install “Bookmarks Synchronizer for Deer Park Alpha1″ from http://torisugari.spymac.com/ and check “Install using Nightly Tester Tools etc.” It should work.
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Great, but doesnt support a proxy
Danny Woods | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Using http://del.icio.us and the Foxylicious extension at http://dietrich.ganx4.com/foxylicious/ accomplishes much the same thing (except that it does work through a proxy). The integrated right-click ‘add to delicious’ makes the updating easy. Furthermore, it just syncs the bookmarks in the folder you specify as being mirrored. This allows for having common bookmarks and site-specific bookmarks (corporate Intranet pages aren’t much use on my home machine).
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
I’ve been using this on and off since it came out, and unless I’m doing something wrong (which I don’t think I am) the problem I have is duplicated bookmarks. Lets say I re-arrange a bookmarks folder (for instance, move a folder to a subfolder) when the xbl file is downloaded to the other computer, it is duplicated, not moved, to the subfolder. This is just one example, but basically I find that once you save the bookmark you can’t really touch it or it duplicates, because on the other end, all its doing is merging any different bookmarks it sees and not making any comparison.
Also, the real reason why I don’t use this much anymore is simply the speed. Every time you open and close firefox it synchronizes (if you’ve allowed the setting) which is actually kind of annoying if you have many many bookmarks.
Another invaluable tool however is AM Deadlinks (not for bookmark synchronization), if you haven’t used this program you should check it out.
Shawn | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
I’ve been using the (now) free FolderShare (www.foldershare.com) service that was recently acquired from Microsoft. With the easy installation of an agent on each of the computers you wish to synchronize, you don’t have to worry about setting up an FTP server. Plus you get access to a bunch of other services that FolderShare offers.
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
flock does this natively through del.icio.us.. which uses gecko… timtowdi… thats all
PieceOfShoe | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
I like the idea of this. Unfortunately my work does not allow FTP uploading. Any hope for HTTP u/l support?
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Chipmark.com also has this feature, and is an easy extension for Firefox. You can choose to make the “chipmark” public or private, and it can hide the standard Firefox bookmark toolbar. I choose instead to bookmark some things locally and chipmark other things that I know I will want to access on all of my computers or via their web page.
Erin | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Abstractmouse.com does a good job at doing this too. IMHO it’s a better extension.
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
I just use blogger.com along with the Firefox extension JustBlogIt. And that way I can also view the “bookmarked” links from any computer.
datter | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
http://www.spurl.net
RusselHarvey | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Clearly, the solution is not ready yet to emerge.
From yahoo IE toolbar (perfect except limits to 1000 bookmarks), delicious (or similar) and the other works being done that utilized Firefox extension (no true sync,version conflict control), it has remained a dream to human kind that to take their bookmark, opml, links, tags to anyhere they go.
Technical challenge to implement such a tool, hardly. It’s only to the blindness of the players on the tech market not recognize the demand of such a service.
The dream bookmark service that I have should support everything Delicious has, plus: 1. Resolve version confliction when replicating between computers, no wipe out blunder anymore. 2. In order to manage the ever growing number of bookmark any one person can keep, a alghrithm must be implemented to treat bookmark differently, those only clicked once and those visit frequently. Likely the frequent type of bookmarks are the ones need to be synchronized between computers. 3. Not to be confused between bookmark service and Digg.com kind service, but it’s nice to recognize the digg effect of the bookmark you’ve stored, and it should not stop there. 4. Why I have to read my rss feed using bloglines kind of interface. Why can’t I read my feed article in way a similar to digg.com. Where the rss feed sournce is from is not impportant, I only care about the author and date,isn’t it? 5. A better yet question, why do I even need blogline, if I can find a reasonably good firefox extension, it will be the end of war between online rss reader and desktop rss reader. Unfortunately, I can’t find a good rss extension yet.
These are probably 10% of what my dream service will be comprised of. However, the key is firefox extension that really blur the line between browser and desktop. If Microsoft hasn’t recognized it, it should be clear by now, that IE is a browser, firefox is the “OS”.
Anonymous | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
Great extension. Just tell me where I can get a compatible one for opera and IE (don’t ask) and I’ll be happy.
Andy Atkinson | Nov 29, 2005 | Reply
I just installed FF 1.5 and Bookmarks Synchronizer works great after you update it.
ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/1.5/
When you open FF the first time it will say that Bookmarks Synchronizer is not compatible. Hit ‘OK’ then go grab the update for the extension (thanks to digg user dcormann):
http://btcorp.dyndns.org/Tools/FireFoxExtensions/FF_1.5_extensions/
Anonymous | Nov 30, 2005 | Reply
Could it just be that you didn’t merge the bookmarks? Just replaced with the “blank” PC? I’ve used it a long time and have never had a problem like this… And I guess you had the “backup” on the other computer, unless you don’t merge the bookmarks there either……..
Howard Brazee | Nov 30, 2005 | Reply
I got myself this extension, and created a Ripway account. On the My Files page of Ripway, they had URL to this folder: http://home.ripway.com/2005-11/531704/ Alternate: http://h1.ripway.com/HowardBrazee/
I went into Bookmark Synchronizer, and put in: . FTP HTTP HTTPS Host: http://h1.ripway.com/HowardBrazee/ User: HowardBrazee Password: ****** (My password was entered here) Path: /xbel.xml
I clicked on Browse next to Bookmarks, and it appeared to show my bookmarks file. To be safe, I have all boxes unchecked.
I then upload manually and it gave me 0×804B001E: The lookup of a hostname failed.
I am at work behind a firewall, and tried setting it to FTP, HTTP, & HTTPS.
I did a search on my hard drive for xbel.xml without finding it.
Obviously I am not understanding something, and trial and error is failing me.
Any advice?
Anonymous | Nov 30, 2005 | Reply
You should check “FTP” and use the following information:
host=ftphost.ripway.com
username=HowardBrazee
password=***
Have you tried this? Some people have indicated that their workplace does not allow FTP uploads (ports 21 and 22 are probably blocked on their firewall). If that is the case, FTP accounts will not work (including Ripway) and you will have to find a storage location that you can access over HTTP(S).
Howard Brazee | Nov 30, 2005 | Reply
Thanks. I just uploaded the file OK. I’ll test at home before setting it up to work automatically.
I did a lot of guessing, but did not guess the correct host name.
Abdul Aziz | Nov 30, 2005 | Reply
Windows Live Favorites which is still in Beta used to synchronize favorites. But due to many problem they have removed the sync feature.
Thomas Rice | Dec 1, 2005 | Reply
I recently started [?external:http://www.mylinkvault.com/ MyLinkVault], which is an online bookmark manager that uses categories rather than tags (personal preference), and uses a quick drag-and-drop interface to let you rearrange them.
There’s no social bookmark aspect to the site - purely focused on managing an individual’s own links. I set it up because I bookmark a lot of sites and regularly use multiple PCs (home/work the most common two places), and didn’t find an existing site with an interface I liked.
Anyhow, check it out, hope you like it.
Ducem Barr | Dec 1, 2005 | Reply
I simply use [?external:http://sourceforge.net/projects/bookmarksync SyncIt]. SyncIt syncs Firefox bookmarks and Favorites across multiple computers.
It’s free software, and setting up your own ‘minimal’ server amounts just to 5 minutes’ work.
Baka | Dec 3, 2005 | Reply
If you have several browsers on several computers, you may need an external (and easily “back-up-able”) storage for bookmarks.
(I use “URL-Album”, but it seems to have only Russian interface. ^_^)
Anonymous | Dec 3, 2005 | Reply
This does it the old fashioned way and makes sure it’s all in the right order:
Transferring Folder Favorites to a new computer.
If the file and folder layout is absolutely identical and there are NO folders in one system that do not appear in the other, you should be able to export and import a Registry key to transfer this information. It has never failed for me.
Anonymous | Dec 7, 2005 | Reply
“I’ve found that I still want to use traditional bookmarks”
I’m surprised nobody mentioned why traditional” browser-stored bookmarks are still worthwhile. There’s only one reason I use them anymore, but it will be a reason until automatic and dependable synchronization becomes the norm: RELIABILITY. I want to use bookmarks to my workstation, the company intranet, or the rest of the world even when there are problems connecting to a given server. Exposing web-based bookmarks as RSS to FireFox comes close to solving the problem, but it’s not there yet.
Andy Atkinson | Dec 8, 2005 | Reply
That’s right. Bookmarks stored to a file can be backed up, whether they be in HTML or XML format. Bookmarks stored on the web are only available if that company’s web servers are up and permit you access. Even the biggest websites can have database problems, which means you won’t have access to your bookmarks. At work you might have a complex intranet site where bookmarks make navigation very helpful, I know I certainly do. Furthermore, you wouldn’t really use delicious or another social bookmarking site to “tag” a link to your intranet site, so there will be a need for browser-based bookmarks for some time. Ajax programming methodologies break browser bookmarking functionality, so it will be left up to the designers to add a “create bookmark” feature, a la Google Maps.
yako | Jan 13, 2006 | Reply
i am interested
Anonymous | Jan 16, 2006 | Reply
If I want to store my bookmarks on an Internet-accessible site, I would want the data encrypted before and after transmission. Another feature would be the ability to selective share bookmarks with friends. I..e mark one or more links as private so they do not get exported to files meant for sharing bookmarks.
I think a database solution with versioning control would be best, include the abililty to mark a link as ’static’ so it cannot be overwritten.
Oh, and you definitely would want to make the plugin work with Internet Explorer somehow, for those who have to use IE at work but use Firefox at home, or who want to share links with people who use IE as their browser.
Fortezza
Andy Atkinson | Jan 17, 2006 | Reply
These are interesting points. A versioning system for bookmarks sounds interesting, although I can’t see how one person might use it that well. What might be nice is a “ranking” system instead of versioning system. Also, why might you want your bookmarks encrypted? I’m sure you have a reason, but I can’t think of one myself. The private and public flag certainly seems logical and easy enough. That would be a nice feature for del.icio.us or any of the other guys to implement (an extra database column called IsPublic for example), for people that might not want to share all of their bookmarks.
Liljoe | Feb 11, 2006 | Reply
Hi everyone! i just installed firefox 1.5 and I have lost all my bookmarks… I dont understand why because the other times, they were automatically imported in the new version…can anyone help me please? do you know if they are stored somewhere? thanx
Anonymous | Feb 24, 2006 | Reply
Hi Liljoe,
Just go to your “Profiles” folder, and look in the sub-folders for another profile - you’ll find (your old) bookmarks.html somewhere in there.
rush | Apr 9, 2006 | Reply
Great tool, but once i downloaded the .xml file, all the live bookmarks in Firefox changes to normal bookmarks. Does it support live bookmarks?
Thx!
Jack Dean | Apr 21, 2006 | Reply
Works through a proxy using simple http (no FTP required), handles tens of thousands of bookmarks and synchronizes between different browsers, computers and operating systems (PC and Mac OSX). You can use the web interface alone (like del.icio.us or spurl) or download the client utility to automatically synchronize your bookmarks. Mobile access and social bookmark discovery feature (Bookmark Clusters - similar to tagging, but no user input required).
Free for 100 bookmarks or less, small annual fee for more.
http://www.sync2it.com
Alexander | Jul 20, 2006 | Reply
I recommend you to check out ‘Bookmark Base’ tool
Glenn | Sep 15, 2006 | Reply
I’ve foxmarks for about a year now to sync bookmarks between 4 computers, 2 of which are usually behind a proxy at work. It’s free and it works flawlessly. I also noticed that it will catch any conflicts between your local and your server’s bookmarks when you get on a different computer and will let you choose which you want to keep. I definitely recommend this one.
bobby gordon | Sep 25, 2006 | Reply
The talk of wishing there was a versioning solution for synchronizing bookmarks got me thinking. Assuming you know how to use Subversion (and that you always use firefox for your browser) this would probably work:
1) Create an empty Subversion repository and server.
2) Check out the repository into the folder where Firefox holds your bookmarks file.
3) Add the bookmarks file to the repository and commit it.
4) Now, write a script that runs SVN update, then runs Firefox, then runs SVN commit. Or you could choose to update your bookmarks manually.
5) Change your start menu so that the icon for firefox points to your script instead.
6) On your other computers, do steps 2-5, except on step 3 you won’t have to add the file to the repo, just commit it.
There are several disadvantages to this approach. First, it is a lot easier to install a firefox extension, unless you wrote an extension that was a front-end for this process. Also, this requires the ability to install Subversion on each computer, and either get the script working or know how to use Subversion. But, if you are even thinking about versioning, it is probably within your grasp. Lastly, I haven’t tried this, so there might be some other problems that need to be worked out. But it’s an idea at least.
The nice thing about this is that your bookmarks would be more secure (encrypted password & data transfer instead of using FTP, RSS, etc), you won’t have to worry about accidentally deleting a bookmark and nver being able to get it back, and you could presumably share bookmarks with multiple people, all of whom are updating them at the same time, and be able to easily merge them (provided you know how to use Subversion).
Andy Atkinson | Sep 25, 2006 | Reply
A timely comment for me since I’m buying the Pragmatic Version Control: Using Subversion book from Amazon tonight! Sounds like a good project for someone. I’m still trying to find one solution that (1) is always available (minimal web server outages) (2) doesn’t break with Firefox updates (3) supports tagging (4) is browser agnostic (5) lets me export to plain XML (6) is fast and easy to use.
runamonk | Oct 24, 2006 | Reply
Highly recommend foxmarks for this. It works great. I have it setup to upload my bookmarks to my personal ftp site.
http://www.foxcloud.com/wiki/Main_Page
Loy | Jan 7, 2007 | Reply
But is this possible if I want to export my Firefox Bookmarks (PC) then import them to Safari (Mac)?
Ken Rice | Jan 25, 2007 | Reply
One solution is the del.icio.us Bookmarks extension for Firefox. https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/3615/ This extension works on all computers that Firefox runs on (you would need to install Firefox on your Mac). Your bookmarks are all in one place then. You can even login to your del.icio.us account on the web for a computer without the extension and just add your bookmarks via the web. I run this on Ubuntu Linux, Mac OSX, and Windows and it works great. Of course if you do not want Yahoo (owners of del.icio.us) being the owner of your bookmarks then it is not a solution for you. Oh and also del.icio.us supports tagging of your bookmarks (think multiple folders for the same bookmark) and public bookmarks via a url you can share. And finally you can upload all of your bookmarks from various computers and tell it to eliminate duplicates as you do so.
Julio Ojeda-Zapata | Jan 26, 2007 | Reply
I once used Bookmarks Synchronizer with Firefox, but I now swear by Foxmarks, which works a bit more invisibly and dependably.
Andrey | May 24, 2007 | Reply
Link Commander is a bookmark manager that allow to synchronize your bookmarks between IE, Firefox and Opera.
cris | May 30, 2007 | Reply
SyncMarks extension for Firefox v0.4.2 (originally on mozilla site but not maintained there anymore) synchronizes between Firefox and: InternetExplorer, FTP/HTTP/HTTPS server, local file system. For local and servers it supports XML and HTML. The extension does more an export than a real sync because it overwrites the targets.
mhardy | Jun 11, 2007 | Reply
Check out Zinkmo. Free, supports IE and Firefox, and has sharing capabilities.
Doug | Nov 20, 2007 | Reply
Zinkmo does not run on Linux does it? It requires .net Correct me if I’m wrong.