Xmarks Is Dead, So What Other Options Do You Have?

How-To Geek

By Lowell Heddings

Published Sep 28, 2010

It started life as the Foxmarks extension, then they rebranded it to Xmarks and made it work across any web browser—and now it has died a deadly death

It started life as the Foxmarks extension, then they rebranded it to Xmarks and made it work across any web browser—and now it has died a deadly death. The service will be around for a few more months until it’s truly dead, but it’s time to look for other options.

Unfortunately, there’s no perfect option that works across all browsers like Xmarks did, but there’s still plenty of options.

Google Chrome Sync

If you’re using Google Chrome, you’re in luck, because most of the Xmarks features are built right in without any extra add-ons necessary—in fact, you can even sync extensions, apps, preferences, themes, and autofill settings from one machine to another.

In our experience, this sync works really, really well—and it’s almost instant. If you change a setting on one PC, you’ll see the same setting applied to the other PC in a second or two.

Synchronizing Passwords (All Browsers)

The only thing you can’t sync with Google Sync are passwords, and for that there’s the excellent LastPass extension, which stores your passwords for any web browser, and since the passwords are decrypted only on your own PC and using your own password, there’s not much of a security problem.

If you aren’t using LastPass, we highly recommend that you check it out.

Mozilla Firefox

If you’re using Firefox, you’re really in luck, because Mozilla provides a full sync add-on that syncs your history, passwords, bookmarks, and even your open tabs from one machine to another.

Internet Explorer

If you’re using Internet Explorer, you can use the Windows Live Sync beta to sync your bookmarks.

Use Delicious to Sync Bookmarks Across All Browsers

You can use the social bookmarking service Delicious to save your bookmarks online, and they’ve got extensions for Chrome, Firefox, and even Internet Explorer. Not to mention the fact that you can then access those bookmarks from any web browser, including your mobile phone.

There’s probably some other options to share your bookmarks and passwords across the browsers. What sync tool do you use? Let your fellow readers know in the comments.