Bookmarks - But Better by Farhad Eidi

Bookmarks But Better is a bookmark manager that turns your new tab into the bookmarks you already have, with every folder as a card. It can also be set as your Firefox homepage.

Install it and it works. There is no account to create and nothing to configure first. Open a new tab and your folders are there in a responsive masonry layout, with a search palette and a full drag-and-drop organizer, instead of digging through browser menus.

No advertising, no analytics, no tracking. Everything past that is optional and every part of it is free and open source, including a local daemon that keeps your bookmarks as plain Markdown files in a folder you own.

WHAT'S NEW

4.4.0 (20 September 2026)

• Collapsible folder cards. Hover a card's header and a chevron folds the card to its name and bookmark count; Enter on a focused heading does the same. A card stays folded across sessions, and with nested folders on, each card folds on its own
• The dashboard waits for your saved preferences before drawing, so cards no longer flash open or as lists before your choices apply
• Typing "d" now only starts a search; it no longer also flips light and dark
• The daemon ships a native ARM64 build for Windows

4.3.0 (14 September 2026)

• Choose the dashboard's root folder from the new tab itself. A control beside the source switcher shows the folder in view, and narrowing it adds one click back to all bookmarks
• Import from Raindrop and Pocket CSV exports. Raindrop's folder paths become nested folders, Pocket's items land under one folder, and both reuse the preview, destination picker and duplicate handling that HTML import uses
• A Settings page you can open from the browser's add-ons page, even when the new tab itself is unusable
• Safe mode, which opens the new tab without drawing bookmarks so you can change the source or folder that caused the trouble
• Setup asks which sources you want as two switches instead of one either-or choice, shows a step counter, and offers Skip for now on the vault step
• Settings > Sources now shows each daemon's live status and where to manage its vaults
• The app actions moved into the header row, and float as a bottom toolbar on phones
• A crash while drawing the dashboard shows a card with the error and a way out, instead of a blank tab
• Mounting a 10,000-bookmark collection asks the browser for far fewer computed styles

4.2.1 (13 September 2026)

• Collections of thousands of bookmarks no longer hang the new tab. Above 500 bookmarks the dashboard lays out every card but builds only the ones near the viewport, releasing them as they scroll away. The keyboard still reaches every item

4.2.0 (13 September 2026)

• The website moved to bookmarks.but-better.dev
• The daemon install command in Settings fetches its installer from the project's GitHub Releases, instead of a domain the project does not own

4.1.0 (11 September 2026)

• npx bookmarks-but-better is now the Daemon Manager. It reports what is installed, configured, running and connected, installs or updates the daemon, uninstalls it without ever touching a vault, and adds, removes or lists vaults
• One daemon can serve several vaults, each of them a separate source

Full history: https://github.com/farhadeidi/bookmarks-but-better/blob/main/CHANGELOG.md

FEATURES

• Responsive masonry dashboard
• Full Bookmark Organizer tree editor
• Search palette: start typing anywhere on the dashboard to find a bookmark by title or URL
• Quick capture: save the page you are on from the toolbar popup
• Drag bookmarks between folders and reorder them
• Create, rename and delete bookmarks and folders
• List and icon-grid views per folder
• Choose any folder as the dashboard root
• Ten color themes plus light, dark and system modes
• High-quality favicons with a clean letter fallback
• Browser bookmarks and optional local Markdown vaults, never silently mixed
• Address-bar search with the “bb” keyword
• Standard HTML import and export, plus CSV import from Raindrop and Pocket
• Safe mode, and a Settings page reachable from the browser's add-ons page, for a new tab that will not load

UPGRADING

Version 4 upgrades in place. Existing users keep their root folder, layouts, themes and completed setup state. The setup wizard is shown again only when requested from Settings. The legacy standalone collection keeps working and can be copied into a vault; the copy leaves the original intact.

PRIVACY

Bookmarks But Better has no account system, analytics, tracking, ads or bookmark-content collection. Browser mode reads and updates bookmarks through Firefox's built-in APIs. Preferences remain local to the browser profile.

Bookmark origins are sent to Google's public favicon service to retrieve icons; URL paths are not sent. Icons are cached on the device. Daemon mode is optional, binds to localhost only and is contacted only after the user explicitly connects it.

PERMISSION JUSTIFICATIONS

activeTab: Reads the active tab's title and URL only when the user opens the extension popup to save that page.

bookmarks: Displays and manages the user's Firefox bookmark tree.

storage: Saves local preferences, the selected root folder and completed setup state.

HOST PERMISSIONS

https://t1.gstatic.com/*: Google Favicon V2 provider.

OPTIONAL HOST PERMISSIONS

http://127.0.0.1/ and http://localhost/: Requested only when the user connects the extension to their optional local daemon. They are not granted during installation.