How to Manage and Organize Your Chrome Bookmarks | Tips & Tricks
I am one of those guys that bookmarks anything I find important. The problem is that I find many things important. You can imagine how much I have bookmarked. Going through my bookmarks was like entering a clustered and untidy mechanic garage – everything was everywhere. I had so much on my bookmark history that I really could not keep track if something was already bookmarked or not.
If that guy sounds like you, you need these pointers on managing and organizing your Chrome bookmarks as much as I did.
Use Hashtags
To rectify my messy bookmark problem, I tried creating folders to sort my bookmarks. This was definitely effective, but I feel there are more preferable ways. Exploiting Chrome’s “tagging” feature is a great and simple solution. Using this feature is quite elementary. Simply click the star at the right side of the address bar and attach the tags you want to the site’s name.
With this feature you can bookmark whatever you want with a hashtag that fits it and locate bookmarks with that hashtag simply by typing the hashtag in Chrome’s address bar. This pulls out all the sites with that hashtag. Or you can open Chrome’s bookmark manager (Ctrl + Shift + O) and search hashtags to find connected files.
Bookmark Manager
This is a very easy way of managing bookmarks. First, its good to know that it comes free with your Google Chrome, so no special downloads are needed to get it. To access the bookmark manager, click on the three dots at the top rightmost corner of your Chrome browser, navigate to “Bookmarks” and then “Bookmark Manager.”
This opens your bookmark manager on a new tab. Once your bookmark manager is open, you can see folders containing all your bookmarks on the left and bookmarks in whatever folder selected on the right.
At the topmost right corner are three dots for settings. This setting allows you to sort by name, add new bookmarks, add new folder, and import and export bookmarks. In front of each bookmark are three dots for settings that allow you to edit, delete, copy URL and open bookmark.
One of the nicer features is the ability to sort bookmarks by dragging them to whatever position you want on the list. This ensures that no matter how many bookmarks you have, you can drag your most used bookmarks to the top of the list.
Use of Extensions
I enjoy using hashtags, but there are a number of Chrome extensions that do a great job of sorting out your bookmarks. My personal favorites in no particular order are Recursive Bookmark Sorter, Sprucemarks, and Recent Bookmarks.
With Recent Bookmarks, it gives a list of recent bookmarks in descending order, grouped by the day they were added. I like it because it is pretty straightforward. Once you have pages or websites bookmarked, clicking the golden yellow start of the recent bookmarks extension reveals all your bookmarks sorted out with dates they were added.
Using Third-Party Services
If you do not want to deal with managing your Chrome bookmarks on your browser, there is always the option of using third-party services for managing your bookmarks. Many are free, and there are also some that are pricey. One that I may have a bias for is saved.io.
It is usual for web-based bookmark services to require an extension in order to function. This can be some sort of a pickle if you are not working off your personal computer and somehow do not have the luxury of all your extensions. saved.io is perhaps the simplest tool for that and does not require an extension to function.
The steps are quite simple but require that you have a saved.io account. To bookmark pages with saved.io, follow these steps:
1. Create an account. This will be void of bookmarks after creation because saved.io does not automatically import your previous bookmarks.
2. Navigate to the webpage of your choice.
3. In the address locator, type saved.io/ before the link like the example below.
4. Next, you can navigate to saved.io to see your list of bookmarks.
With these tips you can save and bookmark as much as you want, without fear of having your bookmarks driving you crazy or important bookmarks becoming impossible to find.
Image credit: Diary closeup with a colored tabs by DepositPhotos