How to sort your web browser bookmarks 👉

Browser bookmarks can become a mess over time. Do you need bookmarks for hundreds of web pages you never visit? Here’s how to back up your bookmarks, purge them efficiently, and how to sort your web browser bookmarks

First backup your bookmarks

Deleting a large number of bookmarks can be tricky. What if you need a web page that you bookmarked three years ago?

To avoid this stress, and before knowing how to sort your web browser bookmarks, back up your bookmarks first. Your browser can export your bookmarks to an HTML file. If you ever need some bookmarks that you deleted, you can view the HTML file in your browser, or even import it and get all your deleted bookmarks back.

It’s easy to start deleting a lot of bookmarks if they’re backed up. You can always find them again if you need them, and there’s a good chance you won’t.

Next, we indicate how to make a backup of your bookmarks in all major browsers:

• Google Chrome : Click Menu > Bookmarks > Bookmark Manager. Click the menu button in the top right corner of the Bookmarks Manager page and select “Export Bookmarks.”
• MozillaFirefox : Click Menu > Library > Bookmarks > Show All Bookmarks. In the Library window, click Import & Backup > Export Bookmarks to HTML.
• apple-safari : make Click File > Export Bookmarks. Give your file a name and choose a save location.
• Microsoft Edge : Click menu > Settings > General > Import or Export. Select “Favorites” and click the “Export to file” button.
• internet explorer : Click the Favorites (star) icon in the toolbar, click the down arrow to the right of Add to Favorites, and select “Import and Export”. Select “Export to a file”, click “Next”, select “Favorites”, click “Next”, select the main folder “Favorites”, click “Next”, choose a location for the file and click click «Export».

Save your bookmarks to a safe place, like a Dropbox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive folder.

Once you’re done, you can double-click the .html file to view its content. You can open the file and use Ctrl + F to search for bookmarks, or use your browser’s bookmark import feature to restore the bookmarks to your browser.

Purge those markers

Now you can start removing bookmarks. It’s probably easiest to do this in your web browser’s bookmark manager. For example, to open it in Chrome, click menu > Bookmarks > Bookmark Manager.

You can right-click on a bookmark or folder and select “Delete” to remove it, or left-click on a bookmark and press the Delete key on your keyboard. To select multiple bookmarks, hold down the Ctrl key while left-clicking on them.

To select a range of bookmarks, click one, hold down the Shift key, and then click another. You can hold down the Ctrl key and click the selected bookmarks to deselect them. Press the Command key instead of the Ctrl key on a Mac.

Assuming you’re syncing your browser data, this will also clean up your messy bookmarks on your phone. Of course, you can manage the bookmarks on your phone or tablet. Those changes will sync with your PC or Mac browser.

Place bookmarks in a folder

If even this is too much for you, you can get them out of your sight. Press Ctrl + A to select all visible bookmarks. On a Mac, press Command + A instead. Then you can drag them to another folder; for example, you can drag them to the “Other Bookmarks” folder in Chrome, or even create another folder for them.

Then you can put the ones you want to use on the top level, and all the clutter will be hidden behind that folder.

This is a good compromise between immediately erasing those markers and having them on your face all day. Put those bookmarks in a hidden folder, and if you ever use a bookmark, move it out of the folder.

When you’re sure you don’t need the bookmarks in the folder, you can delete the entire folder. After all, you still have that bookmark backup file, anyway.

Make your bookmarks toolbar more compact

If you want to keep a bunch of bookmarks on your toolbar for easy access, names take up a lot of space. You can remove the name of a bookmark and it will appear as its icon on the toolbar.

This will give you a lot more room to work. To rename a bookmark in Chrome, right-click on it, select “Edit,” and then rename it. Other browsers work in a similar way.

Of course, you don’t need to remove the name entirely. Could you shorten it. For example, you can change the name of your “Google Calendar” bookmark to just “Calendar,” which would shrink it down on your toolbar. Your bookmarks can become much more compact and easier to identify at a glance.

Archive web pages instead of bookmarking them

If you find yourself bookmarking things to remember them, consider bookmarking all those items in a specific folder, a kind of “inbox” for bookmarks. Go through that folder every few weeks and delete the bookmarks you don’t care about.

Or, if you want to archive web pages for later use, consider using an app like OneNote or Evernote. These apps will archive the full text of any web page and you can search it in your OneNote or Evernote app later.

They will even keep the text of the web page, so you can still see it if it stops working. It is much more convenient to find information than to search through bookmarks, which only include the title of the web page.

Are your bookmarks really useful?

The key to decluttering is being honest with yourself about how useful something is. As Marie Kondo would say, do those markers bring you joy?

A bookmark that leads to a work tool you use every day or a particular recipe you love could certainly come in handy. But, if you have hundreds of bookmarks, many of them are probably not really useful to you, but are available “just in case”.

Be honest with yourself. This is the web and you can find most things with a quick Google search. You’ll probably turn to Google instead of your messy bookmarks if you ever need to find something, anyway.

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