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Import Firefox Bookmarks

August 15th, 2007 · by David Bradley >> 13 Comments

Import Firefox BookmarksWondering how to import Firefox bookmarks into your iGoogle or Google Desktop page? A quick search of the iGoogle widgets and stuff reveals the Google Bookmarks tool, which you can quickly add to your Google account page. But, there does not seem to be an import function.

Well, you can still import your bookmarks but the solution is a little kludgy. First, make sure you are running at least version 2.0 of FF and have installed Google Toolbar (version 4 or later). Once you’ve done that, login to your iGoogle account (if you think you don’t have one of those, it’s basically just your GMail account with knobs on). You should see the “Bookmarks” button on the Toolbar. Click the little down arrow on that button, nip to the bottom of the context menu that pops up and hit “Import Firefox Bookmarks”, now just follow the Google instructions to import.

You can deselect any bookmarks you don’t want to take with you, but unless there are lots of those, it’s probably just quicker to import them all, and then delete any you don’t want from within iGoogle itself. The import should maintain your bookmark groups.

But, what if you are not using Firefox, well the same process works in other browsers that can run the Google Toolbar, so you can grab your IE favorites this way too. Of course, if you have various bookmarks files spread across different computers or in different browsers importing them all into iGoogle will give you a single repository for your complete collection. The import Firefox bookmarks process does not seem to import duplicate entries. Now, you can access all your bookmarks from anywhere you can view your iGoogle page. Job done. Of course, this has been possible with My Yahoo! page for years, but we won’t upset Larry and Sergey by shouting about that, eh?

13 responses so far ↓

  • Wayne Smallman // Aug 17, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    I did much the same thing with Google Reader time ago, but it wasn’t entirely straight-forward.

    It took ages to get Google Reader to honour the folder structure. And, there’s no way to stop it from swapping out spaces for hyphens…

  • David Bradley // Aug 20, 2007 at 10:21 am

    All these different systems have soooo many foibles, if only someone could devise a piece of software that could do everything perfectly on demand ;-)

  • ambikeshwar // May 17, 2008 at 11:31 pm

    I don’t want to use google toolbar. Most of the features seem to be redundant on firefox 2.0 on uduntu (which I use) and makes the system a bit slow too. My bookmarks are frequently updated (almost weekly basis) so I need a fast way to upload them. So, my question is how can I export these bookmarks without using google tool to igoogle or google bookmark.

  • David Bradley // May 18, 2008 at 7:59 pm

    You can always install the toolbar temporarily just to carry out the import and then uninstall it…

    db

  • Ed // May 20, 2008 at 5:18 pm

    if using firefox, the best tool is Foxmarks.. it’s a firefox add-on .. the only downside, is that, unlike google bookmarks, once you’ve imported the bookmarks, they are permanantly stored on each pc or mac you have imported them to. Google bookmarks has that one advantage over foxmarks , where you can retain the privacy by having to log in each time if you need to.. Ed. .

  • David Bradley // May 20, 2008 at 5:35 pm

    Ed, as I understand it Foxmarks is most definitely an old-school application that essentially ignores the notion of cloud computing. I don’t want to have to import my bookmarks on to each and every machine I might use, much better is to have all your bookmarks in an online account accessible from any machine with a web browser. I think that’s the real incentive for anyone hoping to import their bookmarks from Firefox et al into iGoogle.

    db

  • Gaurav (I work at Foxmarks) // May 21, 2008 at 6:54 am

    Hi David, actually it’s more the opposite: Foxmarks stores all your bookmarks in the cloud. Every change you make to your bookmarks gets shipped off to the Foxmarks servers. Every so often, all you computers ping the cloud and check for new updates. If they find them, then they merge them into their local copies. You can also visit my.foxmarks.com to access your bookmarks online. We also let you share and access them via RSS, so you can add an RSS widget to iGoogle and have your bookmarks right there!

  • David Bradley // May 21, 2008 at 7:49 am

    Ah, righto, so Foxmarks is doing for bookmarks what Google Gears can do for news reader pages? You login from whichever computer and it synchronises your current bookmarks with the latest update on the last computer from which you logged in? Doesn’t that cause problems at cybercafes?

    db

  • Ed // May 21, 2008 at 3:31 pm

    If you’re using a public computer, you have the option of using the online only service form Foxmarx. So Foxmarx need not be installed and your Bookmarks remain safe on Foxmarx server. In fact this is where the similarity between the latter and google bookmarks can be noted. What more, Foxmarx honors the exact same folder structure as you have it on your pc or mac.; something that google needs to get sorted in my opinion!!
    Thanks Gaurav, I had no idea about the Foxmarx RSS widget for IGoogle..

    Cheers
    Ed

  • David Bradley // May 21, 2008 at 4:00 pm

    Okay, Ed, sounds convincing. Will it work with active bookmarks too and so make Foxmarks in essence a feed reader as well as a bookmark repository.

    db

  • David Bradley // May 21, 2008 at 4:28 pm

    Okay. I’ve just installed Foxmarks, a relatively simple, pain-free process, and my FF bookmarks are right there in front of me on the My Foxmarks page. I’ll have a play with them, and try synchronizing on a remote PC and will write-up my experiences with the tool in a future review, so be sure to grab the Sig Figs feed if you want to be sure not to miss that post.

    db

  • Gaurav (I work at Foxmarks) // May 23, 2008 at 12:08 am

    @David: Thanks for giving it a spin! Feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions or suggestions.

    @Ed: Thanks for covering those points about my.foxmarks. You’re clearly an expert and I need add nothing more!

  • nasima // Feb 19, 2009 at 10:12 am

    thank you soooo much. you solved my problem

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