How To Organize Bookmarks Once And For All

There are many ways you can organize your life to make yourself more successful and productive.

Among the variety of options, we don’t think about browser bookmark organization as much, although it is something we use every day. Putting bookmarks together nicely will instantly change how you work on your computer, and, hopefully, will add more structure and simplicity to your days.

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Today we will talk about browser bookmark organization with a closer look at Safari, Chrome, and Firefox.

Chrome bookmars

In the Chrome browser, your key bookmarks are available via the Bookmarks Bar:

And the rest bookmarks can be accessed via settings:

Delete bookmarks you don’t need

As you bookmark more pages, the list becomes longer, making it harder to locate the link you need. So your first organizational step should be to go through your current list of bookmarks and delete anything that’s been added accidentally or something you no longer have use for.

Deleting bookmarks in Chrome is very easy. Choose the bookmark you want to get rid of, right-click it, and select Delete.

It’s the same process for both Bookmarks Bar and unlisted bookmarks.

Create bookmark folders

Now that we’ve gotten rid of the digital clutter, we can move on to real organizing!

The best and most effective way to organize Chrome bookmarks is to create themed folders and assign multiple bookmarks to the respective folders.

Here are some ideas of the folders you can create:

• Study
• Vacation
• Books
• Work
• Style inspo
• Recipes

Tip: Once you’ve created folders for all obvious categories, move on to organizing, and don’t spend too much time brainstorming the categories. You will always be able to add more folders later.

To create folders, click on Bookmarks – Bookmarks Manager

And you will open a manager for both Bookmarks Bar and other bookmarks. There, click on the three vertical dots and choose Add folder.

Please note that you can also add all the bookmarks there, although it’s much easier to just press the star sign to the right from the link to add a website to bookmarks.

Additionally, you can import bookmarks or export bookmarks which allows you to sync all your bookmarks from all browsers into one place should you need to.

If you feel like just folders are not enough, create subfolders to divide your bookmarks even further.

Move bookmarks to folders

Once you’ve created a set of folders, start organizing your bookmarks by moving them to respective folders.

To do that, click and drag the bookmarks one by one.

To delete a bookmark from the folder entirely, click on the free dots next to the bookmark, then choose Delete.

Sort bookmarks within folders

If each folder contains just a few bookmarks, you can skip this step. However, as your folders grow and expand, you might find yourself in point A. To avoid that, sort all bookmarks alphabetically.

Go to Bookmark manager, open the folder you want to sort, click the three dots in the upper right corner and choose Sort by name.

Sort bookmarks as you please

Alternatively, you can press and drag bookmarks within the folder as you want. For example, you can put the most used links on top. Then, once they lose their priority, drag them down lower in the list.

Rename and edit bookmarks

Not all default bookmark names will be helpful, so you might want to rename a few of them. To do that, click on the three dots next to the bookmark, and select “Edit”.

The correct way to rename bookmarks is the one that works for you, however, we would recommend keeping your names short to make it easier to scan through the list.

Search bookmarks

It’s very easy to search bookmarks in Chrome with the search located just above the bookmarks’ list in Chrome Bookmark manager.

Firefox bookmarks

Adding and organizing bookmarks in Mozilla Firefox is somewhat similar to Google Chrome.

To add a bookmark, click on the star next to the link in the header bar and choose where the bookmark should be saved.

Turn on the Bookmarks Toolbar

The Bookmarks Toolbar won’t appear in your browser unless you’ve specifically turned it on. Go to the side menu – Bookmarks – Show bookmarks toolbar.

It will then appear in your header bar.

Add tags when you save bookmarks

Managing bookmarks starts with adding them to your lists. As you press the star icon, the browser will offer you to add a tag right away.

Use tags and avoid future chaos with long lists of uncategorized bookmarks.

Manage bookmarks

The bookmark manager is a bit peculiar with Firefox as it opens in a separate window. To access it, click the menu button (three horizontal lines on top to the right), choose Bookmarks, and then Manage Bookmarks right at the bottom.

Once you click that, a new window will pop with a bookmark manager library where you can start sorting and organizing all saved bookmarks.

You will be able to do the following with Firefox’s bookmarks:

Search bookmarks with the search menu. By the way, you can also search bookmarks by typing their names into the browser’s address bar.

Edit bookmark details, such as name, URL, tags, and keywords.

Unlike Chrome, Firefox gives you many options to sort your bookmarks, such as by location, added, last modified, etc.

Safari bookmarks

Bookmarks are extremely helpful. But only if you know where to find them once they’re saved. Let’s look at some of the ways you can organize your Safari bookmarks and make yourself proud.

Add bookmarks on Safari

Adding bookmarks looks a bit different on Safari compared to Chrome and Firefox.

To add a web page to bookmarks, click on the Share icon to the right of the URL and select Add Bookmark.

As you add the bookmark, the browser will offer you to either put it in Favorites or to Bookmarks.

If you add a bookmark to Favorites, you will see it on the default opening screen of Safari when you open the browser.

Access all bookmarks

To open and view all bookmarks, click on the Bookmarks tab in the main menu and select Show Bookmarks.

You will then see them to the left of the webpage you have open.

Set up folders

Just like in other browsers we discussed today, you can create bookmark folders in Safari.

Tip: You can create folders for Bookmarks or for Favorites. With folders in Favorites, you will have almost infinite access to bookmarks right from the browsers’ main page.

To add a folder, click on Bookmarks – Add Bookmark Folder.

To rename a folder, double-click on the name and it will let you change it.

Create subfolders

To create a subfolder, right-click on the arrow next to the folder symbol:

Then choose New Folder:

If you don’t right-click on the specific folder to create a subfolder, the new folder will be on the same level as an existing one, and not a sub to it.

Bonus tips for all browsers

Here are three more tips that will help you organize your bookmarks no matter what browser you use.

Use extensions

Use bookmark extensions that provide additional features, such as saving bookmarks when you’re offline.

Remove bookmark names

Your bookmark bar probably consists of the websites you use on a daily basis, and you can most likely recognize their icons. If that’s the case, edit the bookmark names and remove the text completely.

You don’t need the word Facebook next to its’ favicon, right? That way, you’ll free up the valuable space in the bookmark bar, allowing you to squeeze in even more bookmarks for your convenience.

Create a “temporary” folder

Use the “temporary” folder for the websites that you want to have a closer check out later but don’t need in your bookmarks permanently.

Do that to avoid having 40 browser tabs open at the same time. Not only can it slow down your PC’s performance but can also be highly distracting if you’re trying to focus, and simply inconvenient too.

Import all bookmarks in one browser

Unless you have a strict browser separation between work and leisure, we strongly recommend keeping all bookmarks in one place. You can easily import Chrome bookmarks to other browsers and vice versa. Check your preferred browser’s FAQ for details.

Keeping evening in one place always beats spreading yourself too thin among multiple resources. That’s why we, at Bordio, also recommend keeping all tasks on the same daily tasks tracker and schedule maker to avoid forgetting something.

To learn more about organizing and decluttering, check out our Mind Sweep guide for organizing all your tasks, goals, and dreams. Once you’re done with that, go on to the Task Prioritization guide, where we share tons of tips on prioritizing your to-dos for maximized productivity.

And don’t forget about our Time Management Tips and Productivity Tips articles.