Bookmark clutter in Safari and Chrome: sorting out what you actually need

Four storage places people constantly mix up

If something is missing it is almost never deleted. It is in one of the other three places, or on a device where syncing is currently off.

• Favourites

  In Safari the tiles when you open a new tab, in Chrome the bar under the address field. Meant for the ten sites you need daily. Anything beyond that makes it useless, because the icons stop being distinguishable.

  Good fit if:

  You open the site several times a week.

  Not ideal if:

  You want to keep something for later.

• Bookmarks

  The big folder tree behind it. Good for references you find again because you know which folder you looked in. Bad for ideas, because you would have to create a folder you never open again.

  Good fit if:

  It is a reference you will look for on purpose.

  Not ideal if:

  It is an idea with no fixed place in your head.

• Reading list

  For articles you want to read, with an offline copy in Safari. Works well as long as it stays under twenty entries. Above that it becomes an archive, and nobody reads archives.

  Good fit if:

  You want to read it in the next few days.

  Not ideal if:

  You want to go there or do it someday.

• Open tabs and tab groups

  Not storage but an in-between state that almost everyone treats as storage. Tab groups bring some structure and change nothing about the fact that 200 open pages are not a system.

  Good fit if:

  You are working on exactly this thing today.

  Not ideal if:

  The tab has been open for three weeks.

One hour of clearing up, in the right order

• Check syncing first

  Before you delete anything. If iCloud for Safari or Chrome sync is off on one device, it looks like data loss and is not. A misunderstood sync is the most common cause of supposedly vanished bookmarks.

• Close every tab older than a week

  Without reviewing them one by one. What you have not needed in a week, you do not need. Both browsers offer automatic closing after a period, and that is the best setting you can change.

• Cut favourites down to ten

  Exactly the sites you open weekly. The rest moves to bookmarks or goes. Ten favourites are useful, forty are a wall of icons.

• Empty the reading list down to the last two weeks

  Anything older you have not read and will not read. That sounds harsh and is the experience of practically everyone who has honestly tried.

• Get the ideas out of the browser

  Restaurants, courses, day trips, recipes. This is the part that keeps clogging things up, because it has no proper place in a browser. In Swiva you share them straight from Safari or Chrome into a list, where you will also look for them.

Why a browser is the wrong place for ideas

A bookmark is an address. It stores where something is and nothing else. For a tool like online banking that is exactly right, because the address is all you care about on that page.

For an idea the address is the least important part. For a restaurant what counts is who recommended it, when you want to go and whether it is expensive. For a course it is the date. A bookmark can store none of that, and it has made no room for it either.

On top of that, ideas do not only come from a browser. Half your restaurants come from Instagram, some from a group chat and one from Google Maps. Even a perfectly sorted bookmarks folder sees only a third of that, which is why you end up checking everywhere again anyway.

And the last difference matters most: a bookmark waits. It never reminds you it exists, however well you filed it. So we built Swiva to get in touch when a few days pass with nothing happening, with one concrete idea rather than a number on a badge. Three times a week at most, and anyone who does not react gets left alone. When you go through them you see one card at a time, older ones included, instead of opening a folder tree and trying to remember what you were looking for.

So it does not look like this again in three months

• Turn on automatic tab closing

  The only setting that changes anything permanently. After a week or a month, both are better than never. Both browsers offer it and almost nobody uses it.

• One rule for the moment of saving

  Ask yourself: do I want to read this or do I want to do this? Reading stays in the browser, doing goes elsewhere. That one question prevents most of the mess before it starts.

• Folders only when the name is obvious

  If you have to think about what to call the folder, you will not find it later either. Better to save flat and search.

• Five minutes once a quarter

  No more than that. Look through the reading list, close old tabs, done. A short regular check prevents the hour you would otherwise spend every two years.