OS X: Moving Bookmarks between Web Browsers

If you bring your Safari bookmarks into the other browsers you use, you can have all of your saved sites available no matter where you are. Both Firefox and Google’s Chrome browser even provide automated ways to import your bookmarks, so it’s super-duper simple. In Firefox, what you’ll do is first click on the “Bookmarks” menu and choose “Show All Bookmarks.” Near the top of the window that’ll appear, you’ll see a star-shaped icon; click that and choose “Import Data from Another Browser.”

Firefox will then want to know which browser you want data from and what stuff you’d like to bring over.

Fun!

Importing bookmarks into Chrome is even easier. Just click on the Chrome menu icon from the toolbar (it looks like three stacked lines) and choose Bookmarks> Import Bookmarks and Settings.

As with Firefox, Chrome will then ask you what to import and from where.

And after you answer its questions, you’re done! Whew. 

Unfortunately, if you’ve gotta go the other way (from Firefox or Chrome to Safari), it’s just a touch more complicated. Before doing the import, you’ll need to export your bookmarks from your chosen browser to an HTML file, as Safari doesn’t have a built-in way to automate the process. In Firefox, you’ll do that by going back to that “star” menu I mentioned above, which is under Bookmarks> Show All Bookmarks, and then you’ll pick “Export Bookmarks to HTML” and save the resulting file somewhere.

In Chrome, visit Bookmarks> Bookmark Manager, click on “Organize,” and choose “Export Bookmarks to HTML File.” 

Then save your data somewhere convenient.

When you’ve saved out your file from whichever program you’re using, go to Safari and select File> Import Bookmarks

Afterward, you can choose the location where you saved the other browser’s bookmarks in the previous step, and Safari’ll bring ’em on in.

I will warn you that with any of these methods, you may have to do some cleanup after all of the importing. In Safari, for example, importing bookmarks shoves them under the Bookmarks menu, so if you want them on the toolbar, you’ll have to go into edit mode (Bookmarks> Edit Bookmarks) to organize things. In Firefox, you’ll do that within Bookmarks> Show All Bookmarks; in Chrome, you can edit your data within Bookmarks> Bookmark Manager. Groovy! Hey, have you ever noticed that repeating a word a bunch of times makes it sound really strange? Bookmarks bookmarks bookmarks bookmarks bookmarks…now the word has lost all meaning to me.