How to Manage Bookmarks on Multiple Mac Browsers

I have a confession to make. I use browsers other than Apple’s Safari. Firefox has extensions. Flock has extra user features. How do I manage my bookmarks across seven different Mac browsers, and a PC?

Bookit

It’s a simple request, really. I want the same bookmarks on all the browsers on my Mac. Bookit gives me what I want. From the Bookit site:

Bookit compares the bookmarks you have and then lets you synchronize the bookmarks that are not in all of your browsers. Finally, Bookit creates identical bookmark files for each browser.

Download Bookit to your Mac, close your browsers, and open Bookit.

Preferences are self explanatory. Bookit finds the browsers on your Mac, and locates their respective bookmarks.

Bookmarks

Next up is the list of bookmarks for each browser. Bookit has an option to read bookmarks from a Master file. In my case, Safari is the master bookmark.

Click the Organize button and Bookit compares bookmarks across all the browsers on your Mac.

Organize

One click of the Organize button gets you a list of bookmarks. A side window pane shows you which bookmarks are in other browsers and not in the master, in this case, Safari.

Just as in Safari, Bookit lets you drag and drop your bookmarks to organize them in folders before you do a sync between browsers. From the Bookit site:

Combine bookmarks from all browsers into identical bookmark files. After merging your bookmarks they will be the same, no matter which browser you’re using.

Sync Me

Ultimately, what you want is the same bookmarks on all your browsers. Bookit comes close.

Bookit supports: Safari, Camino, Firefox, Omniweb, Opera, Mozilla, iCab, Internet Explorer, Shiira 1.x, and Netscape web browsers. Notice: Bookit currently does not work with pre-release versions of FireFox 3 or Camino 2. It also does not currently support iCab 4 or Shiira 2.

Synchronization is nothing more than clicking the Sync button.

When the synchronization is complete, the dialog box pops up to let you know.

There’s More

Almost done. Bookit also synchronizes with a .Mac account which lets your bookmarks live online and available anytime you’re connected. That’s fine for Macs. What about syncing to PCs?

I use Foxmarks to sync bookmarks from my Mac’s Firefox to Windows Firefox, but I haven’t tried to sync bookmarks on our Windows PC.

Bookit is a value at $12 and is a simple to use utility if you have more than one Mac and you need to synchronize bookmarks between multiple browsers.