Sync Firefox Bookmarks with MobileMe
I’m neither a Mac or a PC, but a hybrid of both. I pick and choose which applications, programs, and operating systems to use based on whatever I’m trying to accomplish. My Windows 7 (desktop) PC is my primary machine for most things, but my MacBook, in conjunction with my iPhone and MobileMe, handles the task of keeping my life organized (email, calendars, feed reader, bookmarks, etc.)
My PC browser of choice is Mozilla Firefox – in fact, I never use Internet Explorer (the only exception being to cross-test website and database implementation). That’s where my problem comes in: MobileMe is only compatible with IE and Safari for Windows when syncing bookmarks/favorites and currently has no offered solution for, or integration with, Firefox or Google Chrome. This begets a frustrating conundrum when one wants to keep their bookmarks on their iPhone and MacBook in sync with MobileMe on their PC!
The easiest solution I’ve found is to use the auto-sync system Xmarks (formerly Foxmarks). Xmarks synchronizes across multiple computers, and across web browsers: Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. Here’s how to integrate MobileMe with Firefox (or Chrome) and Xmarks so all your browsers, computers, and operating systems will play nice:
- Open Firefox and create a backup copy of your bookmarks. Refer to your browser’s help system for instructions.
- For each computer or device using the MobileMe cloud change the sync settings (in MobileMe’s preferences) to “Sync with MobileMe: Manually”. This turns off all auto-syncing and will allow you to set up the Xmarks system without the partial or incomplete transmission of data during setup.
- Browse to Xmarks.com and create an account. Download the add-on for Firefox and activate. Do the same for IE. After the install you’ll see the Xmarks logo icon on your browser’s menu bar, under the “tools” menu, and on your Window’s task bar.
- Now you’re ready to upload your Firefox bookmarks to the Xmarks site. Open the Xmarks settings in Firefox’s Tools menu and configure your user account. There are many advanced settings and options and you can choose to configure them immediately or at a later time – I suggest simply entering your username, password, and “bookmarks” for the synchronization type. Leave everything else default for now.
- Xmarks will verify your info and upload your bookmarks to it’s server. When the sync is complete, browse to the Xmarks webpage and verify that all your bookmarks imported properly.
- Open IE and configure Xmarks. It will then download and merge all of your Firefox bookmarks with any existing favorites you already have (or populate the favorites menu if you didn’t have any previously). If you have a Mac, do the same and merge Safari’s bookmarks with the others.
- IMPORTANT: After installing and uploading/merging all bookmarks from Firefox, IE, and Safari sync Xmarks again in each browser to ensure ALL merged data appears in each browser’s list. Again verify data on the Xmarks site.
- In MobileMe’s preferences click “Advanced” under the Sync tab, select your computer and then click “Reset Sync Data…” to replace your bookmarks (only!) “On MobileMe with sync info from this computer”. This will force the data on MobileMe to be overwritten by your newly merged Xmarks bookmark list. Note: On the first MobileMe sync after installing Xmarks all of your subsequent machines connected to the cloud will alert you that a significant difference in data exists. You will be asked if you want to replace or merge the data (choose “merge,” otherwise you’ll be back to square one!)
- Re-enable automatic syncing in MobileMe’s preferences on all machines.
Ta da! Your MobileMe and Firefox will now magically sync and work together seamlessly even if you never open your Internet Explorer ever again. In addition, XMarks will give you access to your bookmarks from any browser and provide a plethora of awesome features. Xmarks sync “profiles” give you full control over which bookmarks are synced to which computers, allowing you to keep private bookmarks at home while syncing everything else to your work computer. Xmarks also automatically keeps a backup of each bookmark change, making it easy to backup and restore your bookmark sets.
Happy browsing!
Category: How-Tos, Technology
Just curious about seperating home and work bookmarks,
If you have MobileMe syncing all computers on the cloud (assuming MobileMe doesn’t discern between home and work, it just syncs everything), and you setup xmarks to separate your home and work bookmarks…….wouldn’t MobileMe just go and re-homogenize all your computers’ bookmarks (at least for Safari/IE)?
Hi Bill,
If you disable all of the syncing w/ MobileMe and then re-enable it after everything is correctly set-up it should work just fine. If you have a problem after setting it up the easiest (albeit a bit redundant) solution is to import the same set of bookmarks into each browser/machine manually and then turn on Xmarks and MobleMe to keep them in sync.
The key is making sure MobileMe is disabled before doing anything – otherwise, yes, it will try to overwrite (or merge) what you’ve done.
Thanks for this tutorial – it’s excellent.
I got everything set up but noticed that subsequent changes to my bookmarks were not being synced to my iPhone. It turns out that for this to work you need to have Push enabled on the iPhone. (Or, alternatively, go to Settings > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > mobileme account > and turn Bookmarks from On to Off, than back again, merge, etc.)
Is this true? I try to avoid Push so I keep it off. I was hoping my iPhone would manually fetch/sync the bookmarks only when I open Safari, in the same way that my Gmail is fetched (through Exchange) only when I open up Mail.
Am I missing something?
You don’t use Push so how do you sync your contacts/email/bookmarks/etc. on your phone? Via iTunes directly? I would suggest turning on the sync bookmarks from the iTunes interface so that every time you sync your device it will also update the bookmarks. Please let me know if this solves your problem – I use Push on my phone and only sync contacts/email/bookmarks/etc.through MobileMe, not iTunes.