You might’ve noticed that you can sign into any device with an operating system, and your bookmarks, search history, and other data is seemingly kept intact, saved, and easy to access. But, if you’re jumping from browser to browser, say Firefox to Chrome, you’ll notice that none of that data is kept simply because these are two different companies running these browsers. Suffice to say, you’re not going to get any cross-platform functionality.
But what if you really do want to use your bookmarks that you have accrued over the years in Firefox in Google Chrome? Worry not — you won’t have to go through all that hard work of manually moving your bookmarks over. Web browsers make it very easy to transfer data like this from one browser to another.
So if you’re ready to move all of the bookmarks that you have sitting in Firefox over to Google Chrome, be sure to follow along below. We’ll show you how in just a few short steps.
Do you lose your Firefox bookmarks?
The first question you might have is whether or not you lose your Firefox bookmarks when you try to import them into Chrome. The answer to that is no — your bookmarks stay in Firefox. This is because we’re simply creating a backup of your bookmarks, and then we’ll use the backup file to import into Chrome. Your Firefox bookmarks will remain in the same place.
Export Bookmarks Out Of Mozilla Firefox
Importing bookmarks into Firefox is extremely easy because they have a Direct Import option that does all of the legwork for you; however, when you’re moving bookmarks from Firefox to Chrome, things get a little hairy, but it’s still possible.
The first step is to export your bookmarks out of Firefox. To do this, open your Firefox browser. Then, navigate to your Bookmarks Manager. Alternatively, you can use the Ctrl + Shift + B combo on your keyboard to open this quickly. A new window will open up, and at the top of it, you’ll want to select the option that says Import and Backup.
You’re going to want to click the option that says Backup…. A pop-up window will appear and ask if you want to save those bookmarks in a JSON format. Save the file, preferably somewhere where you can easily access it, such as your Desktop.
As a quick note, if the following process fails because of the JSON file, come back to the Bookmarks Manager in Firefox with Ctrl + Shift + B and this time select Export Bookmarks to HTML.
Import Into Google Chrome
Now we’re ready to import our bookmarks into Google Chrome. Open the Google Chrome browser on your computer. We’ll now need to open up the Bookmarks Manager in Chrome, which you can access from the Settings menu. Alternatively, you can use the shortcut Ctrl + Shift + O to open Chrome’s Bookmarks Manager.
In the new tab that opens, click on the Menu button at the top right corner of page. Within that drop down, select the option that says Import Bookmarks. A File Explorer will open, and you’ll need to select the JSON file that we saved from Firefox earlier.
Bookmarks might not be automatically added to your Bookmarks toolbar. This is because Google usually puts all of your Firefox bookmarks into a folder called Imported. You can access these bookmarks and move them around by accessing that folder. You should find it under the Bookmarks bar.
If the JSON file didn’t work for you, you can try and upload the HTML file instead. Chrome should still save all of those bookmarks in an Imported folder either way.
Verdict
As you can see, moving your bookmarks from Firefox to Chrome is quite an involved process, but the steps are easy. It’s just a little time consuming. But, if you followed the steps exactly as outlined above, you shouldn’t have trouble moving all of your favorite Firefox bookmarks into Chrome.