Bookmarks Organizer is a free browser add-on for the Firefox web browser that checks the status of bookmarks to reveal dead, duplicate or redirecting bookmarks.
If you use bookmarks in your web browser of choice, you will eventually run into issues with bookmarks. Bookmarks may point to sites that are not online anymore, may be redirected to different sites entirely, or may be dupes because you added a bookmark multiple times.
No browser ships with bookmark management options that take these issues into account. Once added, bookmarks are static content that is never changed by the web browser. Users may edit bookmarks, or remove them, but that is a manual process.
While that may work if you have a dozen or so bookmarks in the browser, it won’t work if you have hundreds, thousands, or more.
Bookmarks Organizer
Bookmarks Organizer has been created by Sören Hentzschel, a long-standing member of the Firefox community. Ghacks users may know him from this site, as he chimes in regularly when it comes to Firefox topics, and his own German Firefox blog is referenced here regularly as well.
When it comes to add-ons, Sören is best known probably for New Tab Override, an add-on that enables you to modify the new tab page of the web browser.
Bookmarks Organizer fills a gap when it comes to the management of bookmarks in the Firefox web browser. While Firefox users could make use of add-ons in the past that assisted them when it came to checking bookmarks — Check Places or 404 Bookmarks come to mind — but they may not work already anymore, may stop working once Mozilla makes the switch to WebExtensions with the release of Firefox 57, or don’t offer the functionality that Bookmarks Organizer offers.
Bookmarks Organizer is future proof, it works with all versions of Firefox from 52 on, and will continue to work when Mozilla releases Firefox 57.
The extension adds an icon to the Firefox address bar that you may click on to bring up its interface. If you prefer the keyboard, you can open the interface with Ctrl-Shift-L (Mac OS X Cmd-Shift-L).
You may select one of the available scan options then — check for broken bookmarks, duplicates or missing bookmark names — and hit the check bookmarks button afterwards to run the scan.
Note that you can launch the program or run tests directly by entering the following terms in the Firefox address bar:
- bookmarks organizer — opens the main interface
- bookmarks duplicates — runs a scan for duplicate bookmarks
- bookmarks empty-names runs a scan for bookmarks with empty names
- bookmarks errors — scans for erroneous bookmarks
- bookmarks redirects — scans for bookmarks that redirect to another URI
Scans are quite fast, and the extension highlights the number of checked bookmarks, total bookmarks, and bookmarks with errors or warnings.
All bookmarks with errors or warnings are listed in the interface. You may use filter options at the top to display only those with errors (more serious) or warnings, or search for specific bookmarks using names or URLs.
Options are listed at the top to correct all redirects or delete all broken bookmarks right away. It is better usually to go through the listing manually once before you hit the process all buttons to make sure there are not any false positives.
The bookmarks listing is divided by folder and location. You find the bookmarks menu and bookmarks toolbar listed there for instance separately. Redirects are highlighted right away, so that you know where a bookmark link is redirect to.
You may edit, delete, or correct redirects individually as well by hovering over an entry.
Sören plans to add support for additional features in the future. This includes whitelist support to exclude bookmarks from scans, bookmark folder features, e.g. scans for empty folders, and more.
Closing Words
Bookmarks Organizer is an excellent add-on for the Firefox web browser that scans for dead and redirecting bookmarks, as well as empty name bookmarks currently. Scans are fast, and users have options to deal with all errors and issues with a single click, or by going through the results manually to verify the findings, and process bookmarks individually.
Now You: How do you manage bookmarks