Bookmarks import still messed up, now with double nesting and duplicate/triplicate directories?
Hello, I imported Bookmarks when I came to Firefox from a previous browser. The experience was terrible and challenges still linger. Firefox has come a long way, however UX still seems to be a 2nd class citizen. Bookmarks now has somewhat duplicate directories and this in turn is causing desktop/phone sync doubt and is likely missing bookmarks.
When sync breaks, it is so confusing. How can I simply have a working Bookmarks sync on desktop/phone?
Perhaps there was a challenge when I need Bookmarks to appear in the top bar when a new Tab is opened, as this was contrary to default Firefox settings.
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Desktop Raspberry Pi 5 desktop OS Mozilla Firefox 141.0 (aarch64) Mozilla Firefox for Raspberry Pi OS raspberrypios - 1.0: Bookmarks -> History Downloads Tags All Bookmarks ->
- Bookmarks Toolbar
- Bookmarks Menu
- Other Bookmarks (this must be auto generated by Firefox, it's empty and I have no idea what is it, it's not from me).
Phone iPhone 11 iOS 18.5 Mozilla Firefox 141.2 (29350): Bookmarks -> Desktop Bookmarks ->
- Unsorted Bookmarks (unfile This folder is empty, default not created be me)
- Bookmarks Toolbar (appears to have synced directories as desktop, but would like to vimdiff to verify data)
- Bookmarks Menu (Mozilla Firefox -> Get Help Customise Firefox Get Involved About Us) some bookmarks I must have manually added on the phone, probably not synced to desktop Bookmarks (appears to have synced directories as desktop, but would like to vimdiff to verify data)
Simply searching for the path to find Bookmarks via Terminal, so I can vimdiff the desktop files. Where are the desktop and phone Firefox Bookmarks files?
Exported Bookmarks.HTML, which includes the duplicates Bookmarks Menu and Bookmarks Toolbar.
Searching for an easy way to convert the HTML to text without all the messy HTML text. I just need 1. a simple text document so I can run it in vimdiff to: remove duplicates merge and not lose any data.
2. Then the mobile also has duplicates like Bookmarks Menu and Bookmarks Toolbar, which I run the same duplicates check merge and not lose any data.
3. Then I can run the mobile Bookmarks and the desktop Bookmarks for: duplicates merge and not lose any data.
4. Then use this result as the final file and somehow rebuild Firefox bookmarks on the Desktop and Mobile, without the initial mess recurring.
The initial cause of the mess seems to be the import to Firefox which strangely import to strange file paths and needed manual customisation. This manual customisation is really a basic and simple feature of having bookmarks in a directory so the Browser bar shows bookmarks when a blank tab is opened. This file path whatever it is, needs to be uniform and consistent with the mobile browser structure also, which I have lodged in another feature/bug request.
I've managed to use an HTML to TEXT converter: File 1 has this text above the bookmarks: Bookmarks Bookmarks Menu Mozilla Firefox Get Help Customize Firefox Get Involved About Us bookmarks here are out of any headers and seems to be quick links I needed to save on the go, on the mobile phone.
File2 has this text above bookmarks: Bookmarks Toolbar bookmarks here are standard directory/headers followed by links and so on.
File1 Bookmarks Menu has 4675 lines File2 Bookmarks Toolbar has 4655 lines
From observation, I think File1 is more desktop Bookmarks added. However File 2 mobile phone Bookmarks also also has some Bookmarks added.
Researching: 1. how to count: Flle1 how many dark blue coloured lines which are not on File2. File2 how many dark blue coloured lines which are not on File1.
2. how to merge the 2 files with some sort of vim/linux command I imagine.
Ok, ran a command to count unique added lines, but wasn't perfect, as the command counts any different data rather than just the dark blue lines (unique added lines).
So manually dp'ed lines from Bookmarks1 to Bookmarks2. Final copy of all bookmarks cleaned of duplicates is 4667 lines.
Importing back into Firefox Bookmarks via the import bookmarks.html file and that was a mess!
Old duplicates in Firefox Bookmarks has directories Bookmarks Toolbar and Bookmarks Menu. Unable to delete directories Bookmarks Toolbar nor Bookmarks Menu and had to manually delete all the sub directories.
Then selected All Bookmarks and ran import.html. Firefox Bookmarks now only has 5 data/bookmarks in Bookmarks Menu.
What on Earth is going on, why is Bookmarks so messy?
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