BookMacster2.10.24

Love this app. If you like me love to test/use multiple browser this is the perfect app to manage all your bookmarks for all your browsers.

My gosh. Browsing imported bookmarks feels like browsing and previewing large files on a DVD disk. Dreadful and terribly slow. It takes 2 - 3 seconds to close a folder with bookmarks..? Come on!

I am an experienced user and this is a powerful app that is really best used only by geeks. The learning curve is a bit much for most folks IMHO. Please back up your existing bookmarks before using this app. If you have no idea how to find your bookmarks, and dread the difficulty in figuring that out, then this app may not be for you--a nice little test perhaps. Also, I would note that the built-in utilities for Chrome and Safari seem to be mutually excellent at transferring even the kind of complicated bookmark library that I have. That hasn't always been the case. All that said, if you can read carefully and follow instructions then this seems to be software that delivers on its promises.

This is software in the true, original spirit of Apple ….. it just works, and the support is first class. Yes, it may take some persistence in setting it up, but with the demise of Xmarks , this is a fantastic replacement. 1400 bookmarks, in 40 folders, 2 computers with 2 browsers on each, and all bookmarks are the same and can be added to from any device, or browser. BookMacster really does just work, so very well. The support engineer Jerry is patient, understanding, quickly responsive and SO helpful. Get this software running and bookmarks will just work.

BookMacster is an essential app for me that needs a little initial training but it offers a good documentation to use to use a lot of helpful functions. I’m using BookMacster for eight years now to keep my bookmarks synchronized between Safari, Firefox and Opera without any serious problem. Thanks to the responsive developer.

Great App, once set up it runs very reliable. Good ways to customize and very good documentation. Support for multiple browsers. Also the way licensing works, it's really high quality software!

A word of warning

Anyone using different browsers intensively will one want to find a way to sync bookmarks. I have been using Bookdog from the same developer for some years and moved on to Bookmacster. I did read the manual, read the help functions and there where periodes, sometimes months where Bookmacster did work as advertised and synced my bookmarks from multiple browsers over multiple locations and devices. But always my bookmarks were hosed every once in a while.

Of course I do have backups and did reset them, but try for yourself to reset the iCloud sync of bookmarks over multiple devices, you don't want to really do that. Past weekend I was working on a different location and added a lot of bookmarks. Yesterday I came home to discover that due to an error in Bookmacster I have lost them. Although I have no safe-sync limit, I have the backups, BM was complaining about safe-sync limits. So, hosed ... again ..
For me this is the last time I will use Bookmacster, this was one "hosing" too much.
I will now only use Bookmacster to sort and find duplicates which works well.

There is one BIG problem with this program, it isn't meant to be used by users. All the problems I have encountered during many years of use where probably not created by the developer not being capable enough, but by the clumsy interface. Don't get me wrong, I would love to use Bookmacster, but it is to unreliable. In all comments you can read exactly the thing, the interface sucks and the problem is complicated and one does have to read the manual.

The preferences are spread out over different panels, hidden under other other options and one really needs to search for settings like a safe sync. For me it feels like the developer wrote the application for himself. Of course he "knows the way" but he is obviously not capable in translating his skills and knowlegde into an app that can be used in a logical and especially organised interface.

That is what you van read in all these comments below, people who really try to use Bookmacster, because unfortunately there is no alternative for what is does, but run into problems and hard to find options.

So, after my last bookmarks mess up it's over, I will keep using BM for sorting and finding duplicates, but that's it. A pity, if the dev would partner up with someone who could help him to develop an user interface for customers it would become a killer app.

Moved from URL Mgr Pro... Great support with frequent updates. Very powerful.

I am so impressed with BookMacster. There is nothing else that can do what it does. I was looking for a way to manage my pinboard bookmarks on my Mac and I found it. It also nicely pushes my bookmarks to firefox and safari. What BookMacster does a lot and you need to take 10 minutes to read the manual or it can get confusing, but it works very well. The developer is also surprisingly helpful. He walked me through an issue I had and has even implemented a small feature that I was looking for in the update that was released today. This is what I love about small third-party developers. Good ones listen and and dedicated to their work.

This app definitly deserves more attention. It's great way to keep your bookmarks in (cross-browser) sync. Combined with iClouds Safari sync it even keeps your bookmarks in sync with your iOS devices. Only downside (and probably what others meant by 'learning curve'): it's kind of un-macish. Far too many options, menus and nested selects might give you MS Windows flashbacks. Keep it simple. Setup is simple and straight forward though. ( ...unless you mess things up by getting curious and clicking all those checkboxes... ;) Recommended.

Last night I spent a hour cleaning up and organizing my bookmarks using BookMacster, and it such a pleasure to use, and saved me so much time finding duplicates and in organizing some 6,000 bookmarks, down to 4,200, I just had to write a review here. Once BookMacster had helped my find and eliminate (or allow!) duplicates, I then used it to verify my links and found 350 plus dead links, which I also got rid of. One of the biggest helps was the incredibly powerful and flexible "Find" function under the Reports tab. You can search for type, tags, url, comments, date modified, last visited, verified status and on and on. With various searches, I was able to then move large groups of links to new folders, or delete, or rename, or whatever. I can't imagine massage 6,000 links without BookMacster (I'm a editor/writer, and have collected so many links over the years.) Today,my bookmarks are slimmed down and organized and are so much easier to use now. But of course, the organizing and searching and modifying powers of BookMacster aren't even the main reason I bought BookMacster; the big feature is how *easy* it is to sync my bookmarks with Firefox, Safari, Google Chrome, Opera, Omniweb, and iCab, as well as with Google. Since I'm constantly jumping around between browsers, this feature is just essential for me. Myself, I like to do "manual" syncs whenever I want, but BookMacster also has a fabulous "agents" feature that allows you to have all your browsers sync with one another behind the scenes. Like magic, if you add a link in one browser, it shows up in another when you fire that browser up. BookMacster also has Add-ons/Extensions for Firefox and Google Chrome that facilitate your synching options. I could go on and on about BookMacster, and have been using it since I "upgraded" from Bookdog, another terrific, but far less powerful bookmark program from Sheep Systems. And speaking of Sheep Systems, the few times I've had trouble with the program, the support has just been outstanding, and swift. Are there any downsides to the program? Well, it did take me a little while to "grok" the program and understand how it looked at synching and the bookshelf concept, but once I got into it and learned how it worked, it was really simple. I have no affiliation with Sheep Systems, but am just a very satisfied customer who wants to say how much I appreciate a program that I use regularly, and that saves me hours and hours of work and stress.

It's nice to see more developers supporting the Roccat Browser, It took the bookmarks from Roccat really well however when I relaunched Roccat after the import all my tabs were gone. I didn't have too many open but still it was quite annoying. I hope this gets fixed soon!

Jerry Krinock is a great and extremely cooperative Developer who stops at nothing to help his customers. I wish other Developers would follow his credo!

BookMacster is absolute garbage, designed by a developer who obviously, has not one drop of practical sense. Intelligence does not always omit incompetence! Twenty Three dollars for inadequate chaos? Your also crazy!

Latest update is simply cherry on cake !!! This indispensable app is working like a swiss-watch. People which do complain about this app., should learn how to use it in first place before posting their views. I must say, that I am "dilated" with satisfaction about BookMacster.

I reviewed this app sometime in 2010, and have since revisited the app and revised my appraisal from in the pits to 4.5 stars. The problems were mostly that I did not want to take the time to read the directions. Although complex, the app now makes really good sense and works as claimed. The way I use it is to set Firefox as the primary source browser, add all my new book marks to it, and simply let BookMacster keep the others in synch with agents. I never import from the others, only from FF. At any rate, this is now an excellent application which I heartily recommend to others. I also wish it were on the App store. Don Gillespie owltech@larkandowl.net

I haven't seen anything as good for syncing bookmarks across all Mac browers, at all. It's detail oriented and the developer usually responds to questions in minutes. I'm shocked folks have given it less than four stars, to be honest.. It could be prettier, but functionally it's EXCELLENT. thanks for a great app and great support

I can't understand all those negative feedbacks. Sure, BM needs some work - and sometimes you have to track down problems. But: it is the only bookmark manager I know that does its job in the background. Set it up and forget it - well almost. I had several troubles in the past - especially using delicious syncing - and the developer was always very responsive and provided solutions very within hours. So, if you are looking for a tool that is very easy to set up and to maintain you probably should use a different application. But if you want to sync all your bookmarks across most browsers and bookmark sharing sites in the background, give it a try.

In need for transfer of my huge book-mark lib I have purchased this app today just to reconfirm, that $20.00 has been wasted ! I lost all of my book-marks and NO~WAY to make this app work. To operate this app is beyond my Maya skills. What suppose to be simple ... is simply not. Folders will always end-up empty many of then are doubled. My previous review has received -zillion reply and so tell me someone out there in plain language as 1 / 2 / 3 / ... how you will export Safari bookmarks in to Firefox with filter for duplicates using this app ... I just can not wait for positive reply.

Total Disappointment with this software. 1 / complicated !!! 2 / show errors and errors ... that is about it ... Old version ? Fantastic. Simple slick and most important it did work 100% !!! New version is a piece of junk !

It has been two months since I here panned BookMacster for vacating some of my bookmarks folders. I did not ask for a refund because I felt that the developer had done his job. I was giving up on using it. Jerry is obviously a maestro among programmers, and his user documentation is the most precise and unambiguous I have ever seen in any program. I think that I probably tortured BookMacster into malfunctioning by exercising it too intensively for the purpose of learning to use it. Now I return to my question of whether BookMacster should ever have been written. Reviews of browsers always come from the same sources, when full time users (professional tech writers or programmers) are periodically reviewing and reassessing their own choice of browser. I dare suggest that very few users jump between numerous browsers several times per hour, which would justify the utility and complexities of BookMacster. If all my browsers did the same things well, then I would only use one of them. Chrome seems to be the master of playing well with other websites, while they have publicly stated long ago their lack of interest in the downloading functions. Firefox is great for downloading, but often bugs out or beachballs on intensive research projects. So I choose my add-ons and bookmarks differently for these two browsers. I wish that the SOP for BookMacster was the same as Bookdog, to remain idle until I see the need to stop my browsing and give the command to close all the browsers and do its thing. (My moist fantasy would be to eliminate all the electronic rummaging through all my bookmarks in all browsers, and simply drag the one bookmark folder I need from one browser to the other!) This is my reply (with comments) to the question of my not requesting a refund for the software. Hats off to you, Jerry, and I wish you well!

This is a review after using BookMacster for only a few days, but I have to write something to correct my comments earlier. The developer has been extremely active in sorting out the issues that had been noted regarding losing the bookmarks, as well as fixing some crashes. With an update being made available in a matter of hours. Thanks Jerry. Now, onto the app itself. I agree with Scuseme that it could do with a bit of 'wizarding', and it seems very daunting at first. There are a myriad of options, and it's not immediately clear that initial setup doesn't actually need to be that hard to do. However, once you get your head round the differences between BookMacster, and BookDog (which I used for many years), it becomes clearer. Much of what you had to do in BookDog manually, is now handled automatically, such as syncing. When I lost my bookmarks originally, I had imported everything from BookDog, and set-up MacBookster to try and work in a familiar way. That seems to be the mistake. It turned out better to start from scratch, create a new 'Bookshelf', and choose a source browser to import your first set of bookmarks from (in my case Safari), as they were already all synced with BookDog, it didn't really matter which. Then I set up the syncing options, and everything is working as expected. So, overall, yes, much better than BookDog (sans bugs), but a bit of a steep learning curve at first perhaps, particularly if you are used to BookDog. I suspect this will keep improving though.

I've used BookDog, and now BookMacster ever since I've started with Macs several years ago. It's a tour de force in bookmarking maintenance, encompassing almost every conceivable option to create, edit, sync, validate and archive bookmarks. I really love the flexibility it gives me to tailor my bookmarks to exactly the way I want them to appear. But because of this enormous flexibility, its ease of use is an order of magnitude more difficult than its predecessor - BookDog. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the myriad of options and when to use them (or maybe more importantly, when not to). That's why I only gave 3 stars to Ease of Use. I really think that the implementation of Wizards for its most common functions would go a long way to giving BookMacster a more mainline appeal, and help prevent the user from making catastrophic choices (like accidentally wiping out your entire bookmark collection).

Not for the faint of heart.. but most powerful bookmarking utility out there by far.. sexy it sure isn't but a very serious tool it sure is.

As it stands, BookMacster is currently the only application I know of that supports cross-browser bookmark synchronization for Macs. Because of that, I don't hate it, but I don't really love it either. I was a huge fan of Xmarks. When Xmarks disappeared, I, like many other users, panicked and found BookMacster to be the only other contender. It works... kind of... but it is very difficult to set up and you just might lose several bookmarks in the trial and error process; I did. On the positive side, BookMacster does a pretty good job of quickly automating what I consider to be a daunting task, sorting and synchronizing bookmarks across multiple browsers. I have found it easiest to manage bookmarks within BookMacster rather than expecting the app to import bookmarks into the correct locations and order. Also, I've unchecked Merge by URL in the export settings to prevent BookMacster from deleting my URL's duplicated to the Bookmark Bar from the Bookmark Menu. This seems to be the best way for me to utilize BookMacster. It's not perfect, but it does the trick. 3 stars... I like it, but I don't love it.

sorry to say,- i did trash this app, and do it from hand again. After weeks of try, i think its not worth the time spending on this app anymore. I give it a try. Seems the developer coms from the Windows side,- people on windows must be at last 10% more intelligent :-) 2 stars for the nice interface.

I can understand this app isn't very easy to configure but once you set it up properly you don't have to even start it again to sync all your bookmarks accross clients and to the cloud. The agents simply work in the background whenever changes are detected and this is the REAL KILLER FEATURE! The developer was very helpful in getting everything working correctly (was testing several beta versions) and now I have a bookmark system that simply works for me. I also use Webbla and 1.5b supports delicious and pinboard but even it looks and works much nicer it won't replace bookmacster at the moment.

URL Manager Pro used to be the undisputed bookmarking king, but the current beta has not been updated in 3 years — although it is still functional. i’m sure if URL Manager Pro came out with a finished, updated version, there would be an iconoclastic avalanche of money speeding URL Manager Pro’s way. why is it so hard to make a nice bookmarking app for the mac i wonder? why did Alco Blom stop? I haven’t tried BookMacster and the reviews here worry me as to its functionality and ease of use. i’m hoping Agile will make the ultimate bookmarking app as they have dipped their toes in the water with AllBookmarks. if URL Manager Pro is dead in the water then perhaps Agile should take cues from this once 5-star app, put as much care into it as they the do 1Password and develop a nice, functional, easy-to-use app that i’m certain many mac users are waiting for and wanting and needing. whoever makes a modern bookmarking app that’s easy to use and highly functional like URL Manager Pro once was, it’s a cash cow waiting to happen. Agile’s got my vote for the best candidate, but i seriously wish someone/anyone would develop such an app already. Sheep Systems is the most enthusiastic but maybe they need to go back to the drawing board with the URL Manager Pro approach in mind. i’m not suggesting ripping off URL Manager Pro but since they’ve seemed to have lost interest their software would be a good template to start from. Alco Blom? Sheep Systems? Agile? Xmarks? anyone? we are waiting? pretty please with a cherry on top.

The Application is too complicated to use for what it does. The UI is extremely cumbersome.

Excellent! Best in its class! There is nothing better for keeping your bookmarks synced across multiple browsers! I used to use BookIt and also BookDog. This app is very easy to use and it supports more browsers than most people even know exist. I bought it for my wife and she loves it too. Why? Because once I installed it she had to do nothing at all. It just keeps her bookmarks synced with no interaction at all. Also, tech support is top notch! I had a small issue where I failed to check a box at set up and I got 3 copies of all of my bookmarks in all of my browsers. Jerry quickly told me how to fix it via email. It's a great app. Highly suggest you try it.

Never liked BookDog, frankly, but this seems much better. Only a couple of days using it so far, but as a long-suffering Bookit user, this may be the answer I've been looking for. First thoughts: Would love to have the menu option available without having the full app running on the dock and files open, though the auto-minimize is a nice touch. The file interface is a bit clunky. Would prefer if the bookmarks looked more like a Mac file structure. A bit more customization on the menu bar options would be nice. The icon needs some work. And a bit pricey. I'm still using the Demo and will have to really learn to love it to spend $23. I'm rounding up my rating, giving it 4 stars, but it's more like 3-1/2.

it's a replacement, but BookDog won't jsut be killed. They are two different apps but BookMacster is the future while BookDog (although still updated here and there) will be slowly fading out.