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Which Firefox is the winner when I try to sync several PCs

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  • Last reply by Bjørn G

Bjørn G
Bjørn G
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I've got Firefox on different PC's, running Windows 7 and Linux Mint. I have a lot of bookmarks, sophisticated organized in folders to help me navigate efficiently. The amount of bookmarks are increasing, and lately I did a good cleanup work on these on my home PC. I hoped that this beautiful new structure would be spread to the other PCs by syncing. But i THINK (though not sure any more) that my home PC instead got BOTH structures combined. And more cleanup job.

I would like to make my home PC the boss, and the others just copy its bookmark structure for once, later syncing as normal. If this is not possible I need to export bookmarks from home and import them manually on each PC. Is this the solution?

I've got Firefox on different PC's, running Windows 7 and Linux Mint. I have a lot of bookmarks, sophisticated organized in folders to help me navigate efficiently. The amount of bookmarks are increasing, and lately I did a good cleanup work on these on my home PC. I hoped that this beautiful new structure would be spread to the other PCs by syncing. But i THINK (though not sure any more) that my home PC instead got BOTH structures combined. And more cleanup job. I would like to make my home PC the boss, and the others just copy its bookmark structure for once, later syncing as normal. If this is not possible I need to export bookmarks from home and import them manually on each PC. Is this the solution?

Chosen solution

There is no "master" / "slave" setting for Sync, all desktop / laptop devices are treated equally - data is merged from and to all devices on the Sync server. "Mobile" devices don't get the full "sync" for bookmarks or tabs history, and browsing history is limited on "mobile", too - as far as Sync goes.

Depending upon the number of bookmarks involved and the "nesting level" of folders, it can take an unreasonable amount of time [IMO] to get bookmarks ordering merged between multiple devices. And even when the merger is completed the order may seem happenstance. It seems that the more "order" a user introduces to their bookmarks, the worse the results after using Sync. I feel that too much emphasis was placed upon using Tags to organize and retrieve bookmarks - and those of us who don't use Tags suffer the greatest.

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the-edmeister
the-edmeister
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Chosen Solution

There is no "master" / "slave" setting for Sync, all desktop / laptop devices are treated equally - data is merged from and to all devices on the Sync server. "Mobile" devices don't get the full "sync" for bookmarks or tabs history, and browsing history is limited on "mobile", too - as far as Sync goes.

Depending upon the number of bookmarks involved and the "nesting level" of folders, it can take an unreasonable amount of time [IMO] to get bookmarks ordering merged between multiple devices. And even when the merger is completed the order may seem happenstance. It seems that the more "order" a user introduces to their bookmarks, the worse the results after using Sync. I feel that too much emphasis was placed upon using Tags to organize and retrieve bookmarks - and those of us who don't use Tags suffer the greatest.

Bjørn G
Bjørn G Question owner
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the-edmeister said

There is no "master" / "slave" setting for Sync, all desktop / laptop devices are treated equally - data is merged from and to all devices on the Sync server... It seems that the more "order" a user introduces to their bookmarks, the worse the results after using Sync.

Thank you spending your time to answer odd questions! To get a stable, basic folder structure of my own on all my Firefoxes, I understand it's better to avoid sync. Later it could be an idea to sync if the changes ar not too numerous. And time will show if my organized structure will survive - which I hope. Thank you anyway. Bjørn