It looks like things are getting way out of hand lately. Good thing that Xmarks has a recovery function I use it almost daily now as I'm not ready to do what would be the right thing:
The right thing to do is:
- Do not use icloud for windows and enable sync, that breaks the bookmarks all the time
- Do not use firefox bookmark sync, although it looks like many times it would work
- Do not use Chrome bookmark sync, although it works many times
- Do not use iCloud bookmark sync on iOS devices, it breaks all, generates duplicates and more.
What I do is restore the known last bookmark set via my.xmarks.com and then try to continue as if nothing happened.
If it continues to be like that, I might investigate but for now I make do.
Update 1:
Welcome to 2014: You still have safari, chrome and firefox and the bookmark sync is still not solved (same as with messaging, right?).
Good news is that with Xmarks and the process described below you will be syncing fine.
OS X 10.10, iOS 8 and the new browser still have some quirks and they have bookmark sync, i.e. safari, chrome and firefox have their own mechanism.
I have enabled safari (iCloud) and Chrome. And it looks like it's working. Apple introduced something like the reading list, which is sometimes visibly synced to Xmarks and also to Chrome but I leave it untouched and after a couple of manipulations (see below) it is not shown but it is still showing up correctly on all Mac OS X and iOS 8 Devices.
Important is to know that xmarks keeps a history. So make sure you start slowly and check that you have a good state on xmarks. After setting everything up like it should be some machine, some browser updated my bookmarks on chrome and xmarks to be wrong, safari was still ok. Since I knew that I had a good copy on xmarks and from when I restored that and downloaded to chrome and that was it! Very important.
Original Post:
For a very long time I used xmarks sync to be able to sync my bookmarks from office and private in multiple browsers. Most of the time I work on firefox and chrome, but sometimes on IE and safari.
Xmarks did a good job, since it has a backup and restore functionality, all for free. Also I like the deduplication tools that are accessible on the web page. But this is mainly due to the fact that I started using chrome sync at some time and now more recently iCloud, which may cause havoc and have cause havoc on my bookmarks.
How to manage bookmarks on iCloud?
Some propose to disable on all devices the bookmark iCloud sync, but I could not deactivate it on all devices. Somehow I did not find all devices and when I enabled the iCloud bookmark sync I had back my 6000+ bookmarks (1800 unique).
- (optional) If necessary use xmarks and upload all bookmarks to server (advanced upload), so you have a chance at some point to get a start set, use the my.xmarks.com page and use tools, to remove duplicates from the bookmark lists, also remove empty folders, then display it and save it to a .html file.
- Let all the devices be connected and sync bookmarks with iCloud.
- Use safari on OS X to manage bookmarks, i.e. start deleting all bookmarks. As I had some strange experience, I deleted only about 1/3 of all bookmarks and then waited at least 10 minutes and then continued two times more to get rid of all.
- Wait another 10 minutes or so and then start accessing the bookmarks from all your iDevices. Most of them should be empty by now. Except my iPhone, which had some bookmarks that look to be inserted by my provider! I don't know why but I have deleted them twice and they reappeared and I'm sure that I never added manually.
- Now use the import functionality on safari to get some version of a bookmark set in or start from scratch.
- Wait a minute or 2 and access the bookmarks on the iDevices and they will list all new ones.
Perfect!
How to work with iCloud bookmarks and Xmarks?
- So far I had great experience by just letting Xmarks running automatically, even adding some things from a windows chrome machine to the bookmark bar worked flawlessly. But I would refrain from heaving tinkering on the different browser bookmark managers.
What problems remain?
- Chrome sync is problematic, the last time I used it I had all duplicates even without using Xmarks. But alas, this can be easily unchecked now.
- Creating a bookmark and then renaming it, seems to break the sync to iCloud. I never managed to get on all iDevices and connected browser to display the correct bookmark after a rename!
So far so good and I'm happy that I can have the same set everywhere.
Why did I have to clear the bookmarks and not just work with Xmarks and download from server? Somehow iCloud sync is just to fast. i.e. While deleting all bookmarks and not waiting or not deleting partial data and wait and continue. When I did it any other way as described above I had always iCloud somehow mingling with the bookmarks.
Keeping bookmarks in sync is not always easy.
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