How to export bookmarks from Chrome

New computer, a switch to another browser, or plain caution before you let Chrome sync do something clever. Whatever the reason, exporting your bookmarks takes about thirty seconds once you know which menu to look in, and it’s the wrong menu the first time for almost everyone.

Export bookmarks from Chrome, step by step

1. Open the Bookmark Manager: press Ctrl+Shift+O (Cmd+Option+B on a Mac), or go to the Chrome menu, then Bookmarks and lists, then Bookmark Manager.
2. Click the ⋮ button at the top right of the Bookmark Manager page, next to its blue search bar. This is the menu people miss; the identical-looking ⋮ higher up in the corner is Chrome’s main menu and doesn’t have the option.
3. Choose Export bookmarks.
4. Pick where to save it. You get an HTML file named with the date, like bookmarks_8_1_26.html.

That file is the whole job. Copy it to a USB stick, a cloud drive, or an email to yourself, and your bookmarks exist somewhere Chrome can’t touch them.

What’s in the file, and what isn’t

The export is a plain HTML file in a format browsers have agreed on since the Netscape days, which is why every browser can read it. Your folder structure survives, the bookmarks bar comes along, and if you double-click the file it opens as a clickable page of links, which makes it a decent archive even if you never import it anywhere.

What it does not contain: passwords, history, cookies, extensions, open tabs, or tab groups. It also only covers the Chrome profile you exported from. If you use separate work and personal profiles, each one needs its own export from its own window.

Importing the file

Back into Chrome: open the Bookmark Manager again, same ⋮ menu, Import bookmarks. Chrome adds the incoming bookmarks to the Other bookmarks folder, unless you had none at all, in which case they land straight on the bookmarks bar. Importing the same file twice gives you duplicates; no browser merges for you.

Into another browser, one line each:

• Firefox: press Ctrl+Shift+O to open the Library, then Import and Backup, then Import Bookmarks from HTML.
• Edge: open Settings, then Profiles, then Import browser data, and pick the HTML file. Edge can also pull straight from an installed Chrome without the file.
• Safari: File, then Import Browsing Data from File (on versions before Safari 18.2, File, then Import From).

On a phone

Chrome for Android and iPhone has no export button, full stop. The route is indirect: turn on sync for bookmarks, wait for them to reach your Google account, then do the export from Chrome on any desktop. If you don’t have a desktop at all, Google Takeout below is the other way to get a file out.

Sync is not a backup

It’s tempting to skip the export because chrome://settings/syncSetup already copies your bookmarks to every device. Sync solves a different problem. It keeps devices identical, which means a deletion on one machine is faithfully replicated to all of them, sometimes faster than you notice the mistake. The exported HTML file is a snapshot: nothing that happens in Chrome afterward can reach it. Use sync for convenience and an occasional export for insurance; they’re not substitutes.

Google Takeout, for when the computer is gone

If the laptop is dead but the bookmarks were syncing to your Google account, go to takeout.google.com, deselect everything except Chrome, and export. The archive includes your synced bookmarks as the same kind of HTML file, ready to import anywhere.

The raw Bookmarks file, for when Chrome won’t open

Chrome keeps your bookmarks on disk as a file literally named Bookmarks (no extension, JSON inside) in your profile folder:

• Windows: %LOCALAPPDATA%\Google\Chrome\User Data\Default
• Mac: ~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Default
• Linux: ~/.config/google-chrome/Default

If you use multiple profiles, the others live next to Default in folders named Profile 1, Profile 2, and so on. Copy the Bookmarks file off a machine that won’t boot Chrome, drop it into the same location on a fresh install (while Chrome is closed), and your bookmarks come back.

Next to it sits Bookmarks.bak, a copy Chrome made the last time it started. If you just deleted a pile of bookmarks by accident, don’t restart Chrome, because the next startup overwrites the backup with the damage. Copy both files somewhere safe first, then quit Chrome, delete Bookmarks, rename Bookmarks.bak to Bookmarks, and start Chrome again.

If you’re exporting because bookmarks became a junk drawer

A lot of bookmark exports are really tab hoarding with extra steps: folders named “read later 3”, the output of Bookmark all tabs at midnight, whole projects frozen as folder trees. Bookmarks keep links; they’re a poor home for working state. Two better splits:

• Tabs you mean to come back to belong in sessions, not folders. Our extension, UtilEngine, saves whole windows as sessions and snapshots your open windows every hour on top, so “close everything and pick this up Thursday” stops routing through the bookmarks bar. We wrote up the comparison in how to save tabs in Chrome.
• Links you actually reuse can live in UtilEngine’s own bookmarks inside the command palette: press your shortcut (Alt+Z by default), type a few letters, hit enter. They sync across your machines on their own, and query bookmarks accept typed input, so “search YouTube” from the palette goes straight to results.

UtilEngine is paid ($49 once) and it doesn’t replace Chrome’s bookmarks or their export; your HTML backup routine stays exactly as described above. It replaces the habit of using bookmarks as a parking lot.

Common questions

Where did my exported file go?

Wherever the save dialog was pointing, which is usually your Downloads folder. Search your machine for bookmarks_ and it turns up.

Does the export include passwords?

No. Bookmarks only. Passwords have their own separate export at chrome://password-manager/settings, and Google Password Manager at passwords.google.com covers the synced copy.

Why are some bookmarks missing from the file?

Almost always the wrong profile. Each Chrome profile has its own bookmarks and exports separately, so check the avatar in the top corner, switch, and export again. Bookmarks saved on your phone that never synced are the other suspect.

Does the exported file update itself?

No. It’s frozen at the moment you exported, which is exactly what makes it a good backup and a bad mirror. Re-export when the bookmarks have changed enough to matter, and let sync handle the day-to-day.

Can I open the HTML file without importing it?

Yes. Double-click it and it renders as a plain page of folders and links in any browser. For a quick “did the export work” check, that’s faster than importing.