🚀 Performance Improvements

• Massive Speed Boost: Reduced initial load time from 5-10 seconds to 1-2 seconds (5-10x faster)

• Instant Collection Clicks: Optimized collection navigation for instant response times

• Lazy Loading: Bookmarks now decrypt on-demand, dramatically reducing initial page load

• DOM Optimization: Reduced rendered elements by 80-90% by hiding collapsed folder contents

• OnPush Change Detection: Implemented Angular OnPush strategy for 95% reduction in change detection cycles

✨ New Features

• Multi-Select Mode: Bulk delete collections with checkbox selection interface

• Resizable File Explorer: Drag separator to resize collection panel (200-800px range)

  • Width preference persists across sessions

  • Improved grab area with 16px hit zone for easier interaction

  • Smart viewport constraints prevent separator from disappearing off-screen

• Enhanced Search: Upgraded to fuzzy search algorithm

  • Searches across bookmark titles, URLs, and collection paths

  • Supports partial matches and character-order matching (e.g., "ghb" finds "GitHub")

  • Results ranked by relevance

  • Applied to both in-app search and omnibox search

🐛 Bug Fixes

• Fixed drag-and-drop preventing collection clicks after sorting

• Fixed separator tracking cursor position during drag

• Resolved localStorage persistence for file explorer width

• Fixed backwards compatibility issue with Version 1 encrypted data (titles/descriptions now decrypt correctly)

• Corrected drag-and-drop depth and parent relationship tracking

🔧 Technical Improvements

• Removed expensive SanitizeUrl() calls (Angular handles sanitization automatically)

• Implemented trackBy functions to prevent unnecessary DOM re-renders

• Background title decryption for collapsed collections

• Optimized array reference updates for OnPush change detection compatibility

For users with large bookmark collections (200+ folders, 1000+ bookmarks), performance improvements will be especially noticeable.

The ability to export and import bookmarks (effectively backing them up manually) has now been added. We recommend regularly exporting your bookmarks in the event that you forget your password.

How to Export Bookmark Data

Open the extension and click the vertical ellipsis menu in the top-right corner, then click the Export button.

Next, click the Begin Exporting Bookmarks button to begin the process.

This will begin a fresh download of your decrypted bookmark data, it may take a moment to complete the decryption process. Once complete you will see a file in your Downloads folder that should be named something like the following:

You’ll be asked to save your download to your device. The export is now complete.

How to Import Bookmark Data

No surprise here, begin the process by using the same ellipsis menu and clicking the Import button, like when you signed up. You must use a valid exported backup file that was generated by the Bookmarx app for this. This is not a standard format backup file; it is custom to Bookmarx.

Once loaded from your machine you’ll be asked to save the import. Click Save and that will finalize importing the backup file and you’ll be able to begin using the bookmarks, again.

Summary

The export/import process is currently intended to be used as an account recovery means. In the event you lose your password and have to reset your account data you can import your last backup file. We recommend downloading a backup regularly, just in case.

Thanks for reading, goodbye.

The ability to recover your account with a password reset has been added. Please note, however, if you need to do this you will lose your saved bookmarks. This is because we use zero-knowledge encryption and if you lose your passcode we cannot help you recover your saved data, period. 😉

To reset and recover your account follow the instructions on the forgot password page. In the (hopefully near) future we’ll be adding the ability to export your data and reimport, in the event you need to recover your account.

Tab Group Management

The ability to save and reopen tabs as groups has been added. Use the same tool you’d use to make a new collection, then select the “Add all open tabs to collection” checkbox. This will save all open tabs in the current browser (excluding those already inside another group) into your new collection.

Click the ‘Add new collection’ button

Select the ‘Add all open tabs to collection checkbox’

All open tabs are saved to collection:

Select a Group Color and hit ‘Open Tab Group’ to open all the bookmarks in a collection in a new tab group, or hit ‘Open All Tabs’ to open them all individually:

Select a group color and hit ‘Open Tab Group’ and you’ll see a new tab group (closed by default) show up in your browser window.

Collection Renaming and Descriptions

The ability to add a description, update a description and rename a collection has been added. Similar to renaming a bookmark, simply use the vertical ellipsis menu on any collection, click ‘Rename’ and the dialog will show up. Collection titles are now limited to 30 characters and descriptions are limited to 256 characters. Unicode characters are allowed 🎉.

Opens a dialog similar to adding a new collection:

Summary

Lots of new features added in v1.5.0, I probably forgot one or two, but just click buttons and break stuff. If you do break something be sure to let me know through my support ticket email help[at]bookmarx.on.spiceworks.com.

That’s it for this week, be sure to sign up for our newsletter to get email updates of new releases and updates.

Thanks, bye.

As a software developer, and avid user of the internet in general, I probably click through hundreds of links per day. In my daily work I will research documentation, read forums and find tutorial videos. Keeping track of all of this isn't manageable without a bookmark manager. It's obviously the reason that every major browser has bookmarks built-in. But, those bookmark features have never been powerful enough for the way I use them.

For years I used a custom bookmark management extension I'd found after doing some Googling, but after beginning work in a field with a much higher need for being security conscious I found a need for something with just that - more security. The bookmark manager I'd been using for years, after doing some close inspection, stored all of my bookmarks and data in plain text. This isn't that big of a deal if all you're storing are links that only contain popular website URLs and that also do not contain any URL parameters or additional data on them. To review just how much data is stored in my bookmarks I decided to do a full export of my data. I was quite surprised to see what metadata was actually attached to some of these links and the story the links themselves told.

The data that I'd exported contained everything from which banks I go through, which insurance I used, which college I attended, the timestamps and IDs of some user accounts and the list goes on and on. If someone were to get ahold of all of this data, pair it with whatever data that is already floating out there in a data breach, and then begin trying any exposed username and password combinations on all of the URLs they just gathered, the possibility of a data breach would probably be quite high.

In addition to data exposure, if a bad actor were to get this data and it contained all manner of URLs to internal network resources, like database URLs, server URLs, network path locations, you name it - that too would be extremely unfortunate. After some Googling I couldn't find an alternative that was as security forward as I'd like it to be. So, like any developer does when a need arises, I built the tool myself.

I won't go too in-depth into the technical workings in this post, but I do plan to discuss the strategy and implementation around how I encrypt the data of your bookmarks and how I utilize a zero-knowledge system, similar to what you would find with the open-source email provider ProtonMail in another blog post. For now, just know that all data stored within the Bookmarx system cannot be accessed, unless the would-be attacker knows your password. And I do not store passwords on my servers, or anywhere in my own system. So, not even I can decrypt the data you save to my servers.

I've got a lot of future enhancements planned for Bookmarx and I try to get to them when I have the time. But for now it does what it needs to in allowing you to save and sync bookmarks across different browsers and devices. I am an open book in my design and if anyone is curious about my strategy I'd love to hear from you. Please visit the Reddit forum I've created with exactly that in mind. I want to make this tool based on both my own needs as well as input from other users. I'm open to suggestions and feedback and look forward to continuing to work on Bookmarx.

~ Charles, The Nerd Who Created This Thing