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Published July 15, 2019

I’m proud to announce my cross-browser bookmark syncing extension called syncmarx is finally open source on GitHub!

syncmarx logoExtension Source Code: https://github.com/Cleod9/syncmarx-webext

Backend API: https://github.com/Cleod9/syncmarx-api

I’ve received a ton of positive feedback over the past year which drove me to add quite a few features since its initial release – including the ability to sync to Google Drive and Box. Sadly with no sign of XMarks ever returning, syncmarx has become a go-to replacement for many, including myself. Now that the extension has stabilized significantly, I decided it’s time to contribute to the open web and make the source code public. I encourage anyone interested in the project to log issues, submit pull-requests, or provide feedback.

I should add that I definitely think services like syncmarx that let you you “bring-your-own-backend”, so to speak, could become a major player in the future of tech. So here’s to a long life ahead for bookmarks synchronization everywhere!

If you’re interested in grabbing the extension yourself, it’s available for the desktop versions of Chrome and Firefox:

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/syncmarx/

https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/syncmarx/llcdegcpeheociggfokjkkgciplhfdgg

 

11 Comments

  1. Mario Mario

    Great work! Are there any plans to support Safari too?

    • Greg McLeod Greg McLeod

      Thanks! Currently Safari doesn’t support the Web Extension API, so Safari would need its own section of the codebase. I haven’t prioritized this yet but it’s certainly something that could happen.

  2. Andre Gompel Andre Gompel

    Hello:

    1) as of syncmarx 0.7.0 on Fedora 30, the “push” (from either G-Chrome or Firefox) works well, so a following “pull” allows proper hower limited (clumsy) sync of bookmarks.
    Thhis is very good.
    By contrast I could mostly not properl synchronize between theses 2 browsers.

    2) Would you consider a “push” to a database (Either Berkeley, or PostGRESQL, perhaps Maria DB) ?
    This would be tremendously useful, because of the flexibility of existing tools in the data base. Proper use would of course being able to do a “pull” from this data base… as a first step. Ideally bookmarks from all the browsers could dynamically use this database rather than the quite inadequate (for this purpose) HTML…

    Thanks for a reply.

    • Greg McLeod Greg McLeod

      Thanks for the report

      1) I’ve never tested Fedora so there could be some kind of inconsistency with how that OS organizes its bookmark hierarchy. I am making a note to investigate.

      2) I have not considered pushing to a DB, however I can definitely look into it. I am not sure if there are sufficient APIs in the browsers to do this but I will investigate. The closest thing on my list to do would be WebDAV support which may allow you to indirectly accomplish that.

  3. Phil Phil

    Hi, installed on chrome but have no glue how it should work.
    thank you

    • Greg McLeod Greg McLeod

      Hi there, sorry for the lack of instructions. The idea behind the extension is that you want your bookmarks to be exactly the same between 2 or more browsers.

      The simplest set up is to do the following:

      1) Think of your preferred file-host between the following: Google Drive, Dropbox, or Box (these are all that are supported so far)
      2) Install the extension to Chrome or Firefox on the browser that contains the bookmarks you want to be the “master set” that all your other browsers/computers will share
      3) Select your file-host provider from the Drop-down in the extension’s user interface and click “Get Token”
      4) Follow the onscreen instructions until you get to the point where a “token” is provided that you must copy
      5) Paste the token into the authorization text box in the extension and click the “Authorize” button

      Then you just need to create your first “profile”:

      1) Click the “profile” tab in the extension
      2) Type any profile name into the text box there (e.g. “MyFirstProfile”) and click the “Create” button
      3) Click “Force Push” to forcefully sync your full set of bookmarks
      4) Install the extension on all the other browsers you want those bookmarks to sync to, but select “MyFirstProfile” from the dropdown rather than creating new profile

      Hope that helps!

  4. Rostam Rostam

    Hi Greg,
    thanks for your work! I’ve been searching for sth like this for so long and was so happy when I just found your website. I immediately installed on Firefox and Chrome. Connecting to Dropbox worked flawlessly and I could also push all Bookmarks from Chrome. Only pulling on Firefox seems not to work on my side. It always says “Failed to pull bookmark data”. The same with the “sync”-button. Also the icon in th menu bar has a red X on it, but when I click it shows the normal grey logo without red X. On both browsers I am connected to the same Dropbox account and I selected the same profile. But on Chrome your plugin shows me 10 folders and 170 bookmarks, on Firefox it shows 3 folders and 0 bookmarks. Can you say how this issue can be fixed?

    And also are you going to do plugins for Opera, the new Edge browser na TOR browser?

    Thanks!

    • Greg McLeod Greg McLeod

      Hey, thanks for trying out syncmarx! I’ve heard that some people have had issues with pulling in Firefox, though I haven’t been able to narrow down why. It seems most likely related to either different locale settings or special characters in certain bookmarks, but I’m not certain. This is on my to-do list to look into eventually. As for the difference in bookmark count between browsers, that’s news to me. It may mean that there is a specific bookmark causing Firefox to bail when collecting bookmark info.

      I believe syncmarx actually works in Opera already since it is compatible with most extensions (just head to the Chrome Web Store), although I haven’t tested the new Edge browser yet. I cannot speak for the TOR browser, but it may be possible to load the Firefox version of the extension. It would require some experimentation

  5. Mary Abigail Mary Abigail

    Hi Greg 🙂

    are you going to implement support for WebDAV? if so, when?

    thank you ^_^

    • Greg McLeod Greg McLeod

      Hi! I have WebDAV on my eventual to-do, although I’m unsure about the state of WebDAV through browser extensions at this time. Last I checked integrating extensions with WebDAV was in the exploratory phase, though that was awhile ago and it was pretty close to working in the example I saw. So I imagine by now the approach may have been figured out which makes WebDAV promising! I should be able to look into it later this year.

  6. Tavi Tavi

    Hello Greg! Tavi here.
    Just wanted to ask you if the servers are down? I’m using your add-on for many years now but starting 2 days ago everything stops working. I got this strange message that syncmarx.co is: “503 Service Unavailable. No server is available to handle this request”.
    Any changes?
    Thank you.

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