A web browser plays a key role in our day-to-day work. Using your browser smartly and efficiently will go a long way to keep you productive.

A nicely maintained browser bookmarks system will help you to revisit your favorite web page in a split second, without any scramble. This ability is powerful and helps in getting your work done faster and in time. Here are a few ideas if you want to exploit this browser feature. I am referring to Google Chrome here, but the ideas should be applicable to other browsers too.

  1. Bookmark structure – Bookmarks can be structured hierarchically. You could create a folder structure of your choice to store the bookmarks exactly like how you create a folder structure on a desktop or smartphone to store files. One may organize bookmarks in folders like shopping, payments, leisure, courses, business, etc. In absence of folders, we may end up with a long list of bookmarks, defeating the very purpose of making it. When you click the star icon to bookmark the current web page, the browser asks for a folder and shows a default folder. You could always choose default or another existing folder or create a new one.
  2. You can always use the bookmarks manager menu option to move your bookmarks across and also search for your bookmark if you do not remember where you had created it in the first place. If you maintain a massive set of bookmarks, it might even help to pin a tab with bookmarks manager perpetually. Know more about pinning tabs here.
  3. The bookmarks bar is part of the bookmarks system, where you could keep bookmarks to most frequently visited websites – say Amazon, your bank login pages, LinkedIn, etc. You could add bookmarks to the bookmarks bar as mentioned above, but there is an easier way too. Simply DRAG the little lock picture that you see in the address bar and DROP on the bookmarks bar, right below the address bar. A further neat trick that I do is simply right-click on a bookmark on the bookmarks bar and edit the bookmark and delete the name of the bookmark so that what remains is a picture. This gives me a large space to have several bookmarks. Since typically they are logos of the sites, we could always identify them. Look at the featured image above for what my bookmarks bar looks like, currently.
  4. You could also create one or more folders on the bookmarks bar to house some or all the bookmarks mentioned in step 1. Check out more about grouping related bookmarks together, here.
  5. The next step will be to use bookmarks across all devices. Google Chrome lets you sync up your bookmarks across all the devices for a unified experience.