Google has attempted to put several systems in place over the years to make traditional bookmarks more useful or fancy, but each attempt has been met with frustration and failure. Initially, it crafted a pretty extension that transformed the bookmark manager into something more modern and polished, but quickly got rid of it.
Then, it created Google Collections – a feature that still exists today, but is hardly ever used by most people because the company doesn’t push it or show it enough love…go figure. For what it’s worth, most users just want their bookmarks – untainted and unchanged. Today, we’re going to show you how to take a copy of your Chrome browser bookmarks and store them wherever you’d like so that they’re safe from Google’s ever-changing ecosystem. Once you have them, you can import them into another browser, keep them in a local storage system for archiving, or anything else – it’s up to you. So, without further ado, let’s get started!
What are Chrome Bookmarks?
For those who may not use bookmarks either because they’re a younger generation who consumes content but does not store or save it for later, I’d like to at least lay the groundwork before we show off the export process. Digital Chrome bookmarks are exactly what they sound like – a placeholder so you can get back to a piece of content at a later time or date. Imagine placing a bookmark in a physical book. It’s exactly the same thing, but you’re doing it on the computer or on your phone instead.
How and when should I use them?
Normally, you’d use bookmarks for things like recipes, articles you’d like to read later, useful content you can reference at a later date for a project or a task, and so on. While you most certainly can, you can also opt for a third-party service for any of these types of content. For example, sites like Yummly or AllRecipes allow you to save recipes in a more comprehensive way with pictures of the food, steps and ingredients, and more, and you can always use Chrome’s Read Later feature for articles you don’t have time to consume.
The beauty of bookmarks though is that they’re owned by you, they can be stored in a simple text for spreadsheet format, and they’re hassle-free. They do feature less robust content-specific features, but for anyone using bookmarks, they’ll tell you that they prefer the security and safety of their content over aesthetics.
In order to create a bookmark, just visit a web page in the browser that you’d like to save for later, and click the “Star” icon at the top-right of Chrome as seen below. You’ll then see a dialog box pop up right under it asking you to give your new bookmark a name and to choose a folder or location where it will be saved. After you’ve done both, just click the blue “Done” button. You can find your newly created bookmark on the bookmark “bar” horizontally at the top of Chrome, or in the “bookmark manager”, which we’ll learn how to navigate to next!
Pro Tip: You can also quickly create a new bookmark by pressing “Ctrl + D” on your keyboard!
How do I export bookmarks?
Alright, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s get to the reason you came here! If you’d like to export your Chrome bookmarks, just open the Chrome browser and click the three dots “more” options menu at the top-right of your Chromebook screen.
Once you’ve done that, you’ll see a “Bookmarks” option just six spaces down the list on the menu that appears. Hover over that and a new menu will pop out to the left and reveal Bookmark choices. As seen in the image below, all you’ll need to do is click the “Bookmark manager” in order to be redirected to where we will find the export option.
Pro Tip: You can also open the Bookmark manager directly by pressing “Ctrl + Shift + O” on your keyboard, or by visiting
chrome://bookmarks
in the browser Omnibox
I just want the steps!
1. Click the three dots menu at the top-right of the Chrome browser
2. Hover over “Bookmarks”
3. Click “Bookmark manager”
4. Click the three dots menu at the top-right of the bookmark manager window
5. Select “Export bookmarks”
6. Choose a name and location for your file
7. Click the blue “Save” button
8. Enjoy!
Great! We’re now in the bookmarks manager. While we previously navigated here by using the vertical three dots “more” menu at the top-right of Chrome, you’ll now navigate to an identical vertical three dots “more” options menu at the top-right of this window.
While that may sound confusing, please keep in mind that Google loves its dot menus, but their placement is determined by what they will control. So, the one at the top-right of Chrome controls Chrome, and the one at the top-right of the bookmark manager will control your bookmarks. As a quick aside, see the difference below:
Moving right along, clicking the bottom three dots menu found inside of the bookmark manager will reveal the following dialog box. It features options for sorting, adding new bookmarks and folders manually, and even the import and export bookmarks options we’re looking for! Click “Export bookmarks” as seen below to get yourself an “HTML” file type full of your content. Bookmarks are stored as text hyperlinks as previously mentioned.
We’re almost done! Whether you’re on your Chromebook, a Mac, or even a Windows device, you’ll get a file explorer that asks you to name and save your new HTML file. Simply use the text field at the bottom of this window to choose a name for your bookmarks (They’ve already been named “bookmarks” with the date, so this feels appropriate in most cases), choose a location, and click the blue “Save” button.
Pro Tip: We recommend saving one copy of your bookmarks in the cloud via Google Drive or another service, and one copy of your bookmarks locally on your own hard drive!
That’s it, you’re finished! You should see your new HTML bookmark file appear in your downloads menu for Chrome, and if you’re on a Chromebook, you’ll see this appear in your Tote. Go ahead and double-click your file from wherever you saved it, and you’ll see something like the image below. The structure it follows will be simple – the header “Bookmarks”, followed by a subtitle for each location such as the bookmark bar, etc., and then a vertical list of links to each of your pieces of content…simple and clean!
Pro Tip: Bookmarks can be shared as well. Simply send the HTML file you saved to a love one or friend and they can use the “Import bookmarks” option in the bookmark manager to use them for themselves.
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