I’ve been using Google Chrome for almost a year and it’s been going great, but in the last month or two it’s gotten more flakey. Time to change. How can I export all my Chrome bookmarks and import them into Safari on my Mac?
Funny you’d mention that because I have also noticed that Google Chrome is having problems with a lot of different Web sites, including a common experience where I fill in a form just to find that the “submit” button isn’t working at all. Not just on one site, but again and again. So what do I do? Open up the same page in another browser (typically Safari) and copy and paste what I’ve typed in, then submit it. Frustrating and tedious.
As an experiment, I’ve also switched to Safari on my MacBook Pro partially so I could follow along with this tutorial and partially just to see how much it’s improved since the last time I was using it day by day. I have to admit, I’m running a developer’s release of Mac OS X 10.9 Mavericks, so my version of Safari isn’t quite the same as yours. But for this task, they’re functionally identical.
So let’s jump in and solve this problem, shall we?
First off, we’ll need to start out in Google Chrome.
Launch the “Bookmark Manager” off the Bookmarks menu. Like this:
Here’s what you’ll see, the rather complicated bookmarks organizational window:
Don’t panic, though, we won’t really need to do much with it. Instead, click on the “Organize” link and a long menu of options will appear, with the one you seek at the very bottom:
If you’re guessing “choose export bookmarks” you’re right!
Choose “Export Bookmarks to HTML File…” from Google Chrome and give it an easily remembered name (and pay attention to location too, so it’s not saved in some obscure subfolder you won’t be able to find again):
Now we’re done with Chrome. You can quit that browser.
Open up Apple’s Safari browser now and look at the last few entries in the “File” menu:
This time you want to “Import Bookmarks…” so select that.
Now pick the file you just exported from Google Chrome and it’ll be pulled in in a fraction of a second (unless you have a huge number of bookmarks, of course, in which case it’ll take a second or two to parse).
The window closes and you’re left trying to figure out if it worked. It did. You need to look at the bottom of your Bookmarks menu to find them:
You can see them all under “Imported (date)” and if you want to move them into your Bookmarks Bar, for example, choose “Edit Bookmarks”, select those you want, then drag and drop them en-masse into the proper folder. Easy.
Now let’s see if Safari works better for us, shall we?
Thanks so much for the outstanding directions. I had already searched several other websites for this information and none of it was simple and to the point. Yours was, and within two minutes, It was done. Thanks again for keeping it simple and to the point.