Open your bookmark manager and count. If you've been on the same browser for a few years, the number is probably in the hundreds — 800 isn't unusual. Now count the ones you opened this week. A few dozen, maybe.
That gap is the whole problem. And it's why the standard advice — export it all, bring it all, carry the entire pile along to whatever comes next — never actually fixes anything. You don't have a moving problem. You have a choosing problem.
Why "just move everything" backfires
A bookmark pile isn't designed; it accumulates. It's less a collection than sediment — layers of "I might need this" going back years. Every one of those saves made sense in the moment. Together, they've buried the sites you use every day under the ones you saved once and never opened again.
Move the pile wholesale and you relocate the mess. The 770 links you never open will crowd out the 30 you do — in the new place exactly as they did in the old one.
The other standard advice — sit down and sort all 800, one by one — is a project almost nobody finishes. Everything on the list looks vaguely worth keeping, because "I might need this" is the exact reflex that built the pile in the first place. You'll quit by folder three, and you'll have earned it.
There's a better way, and it starts by closing the list.
Choose by recall, not by review
Don't work backward from the list. Work forward from memory.
Your daily sites live in your head. They're the addresses you half-type before autocomplete finishes, the tabs you open without thinking. You don't need a list to name them — and that's the test. Sort everything into three groups:
- Daily — the sites you open most days. For most people this is a few dozen: mail, calendar, the work tools, banking, the AI tools you actually use, the news you actually read. If you can't recall it, it isn't daily.
- Sometimes — the ones you reach for monthly-ish: the tax portal, the airline, the insurance login, that one government form. You know these by situation, not by habit.
- Everything else — stays in the file. Not deleted. Kept. More on that in a second.
The rule of thumb: if you'd have to scroll the old list to remember a site exists, it belongs in group three. A bookmark you can't recall isn't something you use — it's something you once saved. Those are different things.
Step 1: Export first — it's your safety copy
Before you choose anything, export your bookmarks to an HTML file. Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari can all do it, and it takes under a minute: the option lives in each browser's bookmark manager (Safari keeps it in the File menu). Menus move around between versions, so if you don't spot it right away, search the browser's settings or help for "export bookmarks" — the result is the same everywhere, one HTML file with everything in it.
That file is every link you've ever saved, in one portable format that nearly anything can read. Keep it somewhere you'll find it.
This is what makes the whole exercise safe: choosing what moves doesn't mean throwing anything away. The links you leave behind stay in your browser, untouched, and they're in the file too. If a site nags at you three weeks from now — "wait, what about—" — the file has it. You can choose boldly because the choice is reversible.
Step 2: Write down your daily sites — from memory
Ten minutes. List closed. Two columns: daily and sometimes.
Expect a few dozen in the first column, and expect to be a little surprised by how easily they come — these are the sites you visit so often you've stopped noticing them. The second column fills more slowly, by scenario: what do I open when it's tax season, when I travel, when the printer runs dry?
When the recall runs dry, stop. Don't open the old list to "check for anything you missed." Whatever you missed is, by definition, in group three — and group three is already safe in the file.
Step 3: Give the chosen ones a real home
Here's the thing about the few dozen sites in your daily column: the browser doesn't give them anywhere good to live. A new tab page tops out around ten shortcuts — we've written about more than ten shortcuts on Chrome's new tab — and a bookmarks bar fits maybe a dozen before the rest collapse behind a chevron menu. Dozens of daily sites, and no surface that shows them all at once.
That's the job of a personal homepage: one page where every daily site is visible, grouped, and one click away. Any of the best personal homepage apps can play this role. Here's how it works in Abunch — which is ours, so judge accordingly:
- If your kept set is lean, import the file directly. Exports from Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari all work. Loose bookmarks that weren't in any folder land in an Unsorted category so they're easy to find. Some entries get skipped — browser-internal links (
chrome://pages and the like), feed subscriptions (Abunch doesn't do RSS), and the rare bookmark with no address — and the import tells you what it skipped. - Two honest caveats. Empty folders are dropped, and don't expect your folder tree to come through one-to-one — treat an import as raw material and shape your categories afterward. Import also respects your plan's capacity: if your selection runs past it, the preview asks you to deselect some folders before anything is copied — it never quietly trims your set.
- If your pile is the 800 kind, skip the mass import. Add your daily column by hand instead — it's a few dozen links you know by heart, which is faster than pruning 800 down to them. Bring over the ones you actually use; the file keeps the rest.
- Categories behave like the folders you're used to — including opening every link in one go (Open all), with a quick confirmation once a set runs past 15 links, because everyone has accidentally opened 40 tabs at least once.
The free plan covers up to 20 categories and 200 links — which fits the point of the exercise: a homepage holds what you use, not everything you've ever saved. Standard adds a second desktop called Reserved for the sometimes column — the sites you rarely open stay one click away without crowding the daily view — plus a much larger capacity, up to 200 categories and 2,000 links.
FAQ
Do I lose the bookmarks I don't move? No. They stay in your browser exactly as they were, and they're in the exported HTML file as well. Choosing what moves is not deleting — it's deciding what earns a place on the page you see every day.
Which browsers can I export from? Chrome, Edge, Firefox, and Safari all export the same kind of HTML bookmarks file, and Abunch imports all four.
Isn't 200 links on the free plan small next to 800 bookmarks? It's measuring a different thing. The file holds everything you've ever saved; your homepage holds the sites you actually use — and for most people that's dozens, not hundreds. If your kept set genuinely runs past the free plan, Standard goes up to 200 categories and 2,000 links.
What should I do with the exported file afterward? Keep it. It costs nothing to store, it's readable by any browser, and it's the reason you never have to agonize over a single bookmark again — nothing you leave off the page is lost.
The bottom line
Eight hundred bookmarks isn't a to-do list, and moving all of them isn't a plan. Export once, so nothing can be lost. Choose from memory, because your daily sites are already in your head. Then give those few dozen a page built for daily use — pick your daily sites and leave the rest, and use it as your browser homepage so the whole exercise pays off every single morning.
Abunch is free to start. Bring the ones you actually use.