I have long been annoyed by one of my morning rituals, because I knew there was a better way to proceed, if I would just take the time to figure out how to organize my Chrome bookmarks.
The ritual.
There are a couple of things I like to check in the morning. First, I like to check my various investments to see how much I’ve lost (OK, sometimes they go up). And, since I have had some of my blogs hacked in the past, I like to open up my eight key websites, to make sure they are all humming along. Finally, there are a few news and information sites that I like to check into if I have a little extra time.
For far too long, I would type in each site. It’s not quite as bad as it sounds, because Chrome auto completes the URLs as I begin typing. Still, I did at some point create bookmarks for all of the sites, but that still required me to open a tab, click on the bookmark, open another tab, click on that bookmark, etc.
Here is how to organize your Chrome bookmarks.
Chrome makes it surprisingly easy to streamline the process. Just open a fresh browser window, and then open all the tabs you might ever want to open for a given task. In the case of my key websites, I opened eight tabs, each with one of the key sites.
Be sure that you navigate past all the unnecessary windows. For example, on some of my investment accounts, the first page of the site presents me with a button that takes me to the sign-on page. I navigated to the sign-on page before I created a bookmark for that page.
Once you have the group of websites organized just the way you want them (including in the order you want them), click on the Chrome customization button, which is the three vertical dots in the upper-right hand corner, right below the X that closes the browser.
In that drop-down menu, select “bookmarks” and then “bookmark all tabs.” A window will open up, asking for the name of the new folder. Give a name to your group of sites.
You’re not done yet.
That folder will appear in your bookmarks, so you are already way ahead of the game, but the real wonder still awaits. Go back to the three dots, select “bookmarks” again, but this time select “bookmark manager.” Find the folder you just created, and drag it up to your bookmark bar. If you don’t have a bookmark bar, hit Ctrl+Shift+B to turn it on.
Now, every time you open Chrome, your folder will be there. You now have a few choices. if you left click on the folder, it will drop down the list of all of the websites you have placed in that folder and you can select the one you want. But if you right click on the folder you can open all the tabs simultaneously.
Organizational bliss achieved.
If you want to really get your geek on, check out this article on how to organize your tabs into groups on the fly.