BookMacster
2.9.15
BookMacster
2.9.15Organize and manage bookmarks, sync across browsers.
Overview
BookMacster is a bookmarks manager for your Mac which plays nicely with iCloud Safari syncing, Firefox Sync, Sign In to Chrome, and Opera Sync. (Ours are the only non-Apple apps which can modify Safari bookmarks without corrupting iCloud data.) It can be used in one of three ways, or all three:
- Manage Browser Bookmarks. Add alphabetizing and tagging. Verify, fix dupes, consolidate.
- Cross-Browser Syncing. Sync bookmarks of Firefox, Chrome, Opera and more among all your devices.
- Directly. Keep your bookmarks in one central store, accessible within web browsers.
Features
- Compatible with iCloud Safari syncing, Firefox Sync, Google Chrome's Sign In. Bookmarks added to these apps on your Mac will show up in these apps on iOS or Andriod devices.
- Import/export with Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Vivaldi, iCab, Roccat, Pinboard, Diigo, and OmniWeb.
- Easily organize with tags, hierarchy, or both.
- Verifies bookmarks, fixes redirects, duplicates, can upgrade insecure bookmarks and remove URL cruft.
- Sort (alphabetize) automatically when bookmarks are changed. You control which folders you want to be sorted or not sorted, how to sort them.
- Supports multiple user profiles in Firefox and Google Chrome.
- Scriptable to collect new bookmarks from NetNewsWire or similar apps.
What's new in BookMacster
Version 2.9.15:
- Fixed a bug which sometimes caused Error 992544 on some Macs after our app performed a syncing operation in the background, and also further improved the information in that error to aid pinpointing of any similar bugs. We hope there are no other such bugs, and so Error 992544 will not be seen any more. But if anyone still sees Error 992544, please click the life preserver button in the dialog and send us the data in the email which will be generated.
- When exporting certain URLs which have invalid paths or strangely encoded path portions to Chrome, Chromium, Vivaldi, Brave, Opera, Firefox, and Safari, in certain cases, now better emulates the auto-correction of these URLs by these browsers, eliminating churn in subsequent imports and exports with these browsers.
- When an open document is modified on disk, presumably from another Mac, via Dropbox or iCloud Drive, the changes now appear in the existing document window, instead of closing that window and opening a new one.
- No longer attempts to sync our bookmarks’ Shortcut attribute with Firefox bookmarks’ Keyword attribute, which has been deprecated in Firefox.
BookMacster Screenshots
$22.95
App requirements:
- Intel 64
- OS X 10.10.0 or later
Category:
Developer Website:
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66 BookMacster Reviews
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We publish three other bookmarks management applications, tailored to specific use cases. Users who only want syncing among the built-in bookmarks of web browsers (Firefox, Safari, Chrome, etc.) should choose Synkmark. The user interface of Synkmark is simpler than BookMacster, because it supports only this type of syncing.
Here is what you'll experience when setting up Synkmark:
• From a list of installed web browsers found, switch on checkboxes to indicate which you want synced.
• Click "Done". Synkmark automatically imports and de-duplicates from the selected browsers.
• Follow the prompt to install our web browser extension if syncing Firefox, Chrome, Opera or Vivaldi. Browsers require your permission for this nowadays.
• A Help page appears, explaining what has already been done, and the next steps.
• Reorganize your bookmarks as desired.
• Click on "Syncing".
• As prompted, click "Export". This sends your organized bookmarks to your selected browsers.
• Quit Synkmark. Automatic syncing, in the background, now begins.
Configuring to sync with BookMacster is similar, but because BookMacster supports additional use cases, there are some additional steps, and additional cognitive overhead. Because "less is more", BookMacster is not recommended for most users. To select the appropriate app, please search for "selection guide site:sheepsystems.com".
Although there are apps which mess up bookmarks (usually by carelessly overwriting Safari's bookmarks file), our apps do not. The Help page which appears during initial configuration recommends one additional step: clearing out all browsers' bookmarks before your first export. This is to remove any pre-existing corruption.
Ah, Sync Loops. Although rare, they can ruin your day, so yes we warn users. A Sync Loop occurs if you begin syncing with one of our apps between a pair of browser installations whose bookmarks are also being synced by some other app. The two apps will continuously step on one another's work. For a picture, please search "Sync Loop site:sheepsystems.com". Our apps detect when your bookmarks are probably being damaged by a Sync Loop, stop syncing and warn you. Although we would like to warn you as soon as a Sync Loop is created, security restrictions, the fragility of reverse engineering, and lack of access to other devices prevent us from reliably knowing what you have configured in other apps.
Our apps do not ask which browsers you have installed. They are smart enough to determine that.
Including beta releases, we have built and published new versions of BookMacster 290 times since 2009; four in the last three months.
Synkmark makes syncing bookmarks among different browsers as simple and reliable as practical.
The upgrade pricing should work automatically, based on a prior installation. For users who don't have version 1 installed any more, or for any other issues, send a email to sales@sheepsystems.com and we shall send you a coupon code.
My personal outlook regarding the upgrade cost is that I have had a license for vers. 1.x for many years and have enjoyed great support and a lot of free updates during that time. Paying a relatively small upgrade cost now for such a fantastic bookmark manager is well worth it to me.
Support has always been fast and terrific on the few occasions I have requested assistance. The assistance I requested also had nothing to do with the functioning of BookMacster. I have never once had to request support because BookMacster failed its job.
BookMacster also "just works." For me it has been seamless and invisible in syncing my bookmarks between multiple browsers and is among the first few applications that are a must-install for me in a new setup.
You may be aware that we didn't write BookMacster's Check for Update feature; it's an open-source package called Sparkle which has been used by probably thousands of non-Mac-App-Store apps, big and small, for the last ten years. So to be honest with you, I never really studied how it works in this regard.
But I'm glad you noticed the handy "Save, Export disabled" indicator in the upper right corner of the window! I added that on Saturday after reading the comment by you and JamesHarrisPhoto, just before pushing the final version 2.0.2 out the door. If you have a demo license it indicates "Fully functioning demo". Pretty neat idea, which I can say without bragging because I stole it from Cocoatech's Path Finder app :))
So, the behavior is baked into Sparkle and baked into Version 1, so the only way I could change this now would be to turn off the RSS update feed. But, in my view, that would cause more serious trouble for users whose Firefox extensions will stop working after this week. The Update News explains how to revert to Version 1, for anyone that wants to!
I've made a note to fork Sparkle and add the Update News to that window if and when we ever do a version 3, but since it took six years to get to version 2, we've got plenty of time :)
Thank you, Broz, for being persistent with this issue.