GrapheneOS
Support for importing/exporting bookmarks
I've been waiting for this for a long time and hope it gets implemented soon!
Edit Feb 2025: Still waiting.
If teamwork makes the dream work, organized info resource bookmarks need to be sharable.
It's bizarre that the only way to do this is to save your credentials in the cloud. Makes you wonder dont it 🤔?
@hansaplasst
It's bizarre that the only way to do this is to save your credentials in the cloud. Makes you wonder dont it 🤔?
There's full support for password managers including local ones and Chromium has been phasing out the built-in password manager on mobile. We're re-enabling it for people who were using it already but it's a good idea to switch to a local password manager app instead.
Importing bookmarks is a really big need. Third party password managers is the way to go for passwords, but not being able to import bookmarks is forcing me to continue to use Brave instead and forever.
Importing bookmarks would be a big hurdle to finally use Vanadium instead of Brave or Cromite. I have tons of bookmarks and can't possibly add them all in my day schedule.
I'm grateful that GrapheneOS and Vanadium exist and is maintained at all, so i'm sure it will get worked on when it has to be done.
@Pandooroo You should at least use Brave rather than Cromite.
Are there particular reasons as to why? I like the Brave Browser for a lot of reasons, but the connection to a for-profit company and the heavy promotion of crypto features often neg me towards something like Cromite.
Cromite makes a bunch of sketchy changes including adding the Eyeo ad blocking engine. Eyeo is the company behind the acceptable ads program which purchased Adblock and uBlock extensions to add acceptable ads into them. They're the ones squatting on the stolen uBlock name. Their filtering engine has issues with memory corruption bugs and Cromite has to strip out a bunch of tracking code and acceptable ads, among other things. Cromite adds various other highly questionable things like this. It's just an example of how it has changed since the project it was forked from which was at least relatively security focused.
Cromite makes a bunch of sketchy changes including adding the Eyeo ad blocking engine. Eyeo is the company behind the acceptable ads program which purchased Adblock and uBlock extensions to add acceptable ads into them. They're the ones squatting on the stolen uBlock name. Their filtering engine has issues with memory corruption bugs and Cromite has to strip out a bunch of tracking code and acceptable ads, among other things. Cromite adds various other highly questionable things like this. It's just an example of how it has changed since the project it was forked from which was at least relatively security focused.
Goddamn, i...did not realise that. Huh, well, then my choice for now is clear. Thank you very much!
Importing bookmarks would be a big hurdle to finally use Vanadium instead of Brave or Cromite. I have tons of bookmarks and can't possibly add them all in my day schedule.
I'm grateful that GrapheneOS and Vanadium exist and is maintained at all, so i'm sure it will get worked on when it has to be done.
I recently did mine and only took about ~20 min
Easy to do, just a few steps.
Over 998 bookmarks I had
Importing bookmarks would be a big hurdle to finally use Vanadium instead of Brave or Cromite. I have tons of bookmarks and can't possibly add them all in my day schedule. I'm grateful that GrapheneOS and Vanadium exist and is maintained at all, so i'm sure it will get worked on when it has to be done.
I recently did mine and only took about ~20 min
Easy to do, just a few steps.
Over 998 bookmarks I had
Do you know how to export?
I want to use Vanadium, but absence of bookmarks import/export feature is blocker for me too
I don't really understand, why vanadium can not export bookmarks. Is there some explanation for that? I have over 60 bookmarks on my old phone and want to import them. So there is no solution for that within several years? Till now I didn't even know, that there is no possibility to do that. Now, when I need it, I realize the big problem.
Are there some plans to do that? It would be nice to know. If not, it's a total blocker for me too and I must go with chromium or smth linke that. That would be pity!
We haven't had the time or resources to implement it yet.
ok, that's the point I understand.
If the function will come in some months or in a year, I can live with that. But if it's not even close to that, must go with smth else.
Is there some timeline for that?
For anyone in a pinch, you can export bookmarks like this:
- Install e.g. "Save Locally": https://github.com/MateusRodCosta/SaveLocally
- Select all bookmarks you want to export (you'll have to repeat these steps for each folder unfortunately)
- Open them in incognito tabs (make sure you don't have any incognito tabs open)
- Go to your incognito tabs
- Select one tab, then choose the option to select all tabs
- Share all tabs
- Select "Save Locally" as the share target and choose a folder to save your bookmarks at
For anyone in a pinch, you can export bookmarks like this:
- Install "Save Locally" from F-Droid
- Select all bookmarks you want to export (you'll have to repeat these steps for each folder unfortunately)
- Open them in incognito tabs (make sure you don't have any incognito tabs open)
- Go to your incognito tabs
- Select one tab, then choose the option to select all tabs
- Share all tabs
- Select "Save Locally" as the share target and choose a folder to save your bookmarks at
Don't forget F-Droid isn't required better to link directly to their github repo here:
https://github.com/MateusRodCosta/SaveLocally
I hope I’m not breaking any rules here, I just want to be helpful. Since I had the same issue/request, I tried every possible way to find a solution. In the end, I created my own small workaround. If official import/export support is added in the future, that would be great, but in the meantime, since I still wanted to use Vanadium, I made an HTML page and a small Python script for exporting bookmarks (Chromium only) that can be used with Vanadium.
If you’re interested, I’ve shared it here on GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/Baro82/grapheneos-vanadium-bookmarks-helper
My only request: please read the README and check out the few lines of code, it’s all really simple.
I hope I’m not breaking any rules here, I just want to be helpful. Since I had the same issue/request, I tried every possible way to find a solution. In the end, I created my own small workaround. If official import/export support is added in the future, that would be great, but in the meantime, since I still wanted to use Vanadium, I made an HTML page and a small Python script for exporting bookmarks (Chromium only) that can be used with Vanadium.
If you’re interested, I’ve shared it here on GitHub (MIT): https://github.com/Baro82/grapheneos-vanadium-bookmarks-helper
My only request: please read the README and check out the few lines of code, it’s all really simple.
Very interesting workaround, thank you very much 👍🏻
I would also like to add (just to be helpful) while the devs work on this
You could use a online service as a workaround until this feature gets implemented as there are some online services with fully functional web apps purely based around being bookmark managers. They honestly have served as a pretty viable alternative for me. Also works as a pretty solid way to bridge bookmarks between any browser that exists regardless of functionality or differences.
But of course there is a inherent privacy concern here as bookmarks can effectively be used as another way to track browsing habits. So as always if you are not self hosting be careful with what you trust with that data. Also on a side note every bookmark service I have seen allows for local bookmark backups still so you aren't losing out on local backup functionality even if you use this method.
Also @hubbsterx
I don't really understand, why vanadium can not export bookmarks.
I think honestly a better question would be why can't upstream Chromium or Gecko in general not export bookmarks on mobile without patching despite their desktop counterparts being able to do so? That's what I don't understand. I mean extensions is one thing (even though I really think mobile and desktop should have complete feature parity that would solve. A LOT of usability problems.) But this really doesn't make sense.
To be honest my best guess is it's supposed to function as a form of vendor lock in. But even if so why not just implement the feature anyways and then just hide it in their browsers (referring to Google Chrome and Firefox respectively)
But at the end of the day there isn't a whole lot of telling what goes on through the heads there developing these. What I do know is that for some reason my mobile browser has less features than my desktop browser for no justifiable reason.
I mean in regards to extensions in particular you can't even really make the adblock argument anymore when there are plenty of adblock options between browsers and other stuff on the Play Store. But that of course is off topic.
I was looking for the same and found a bit of a special workaround for my need, a one-time bookmark import: Creating bookmarks with adb keypresses. It feels a bit stupid but it worked for what I needed :)
Here's how i did it, with a linux shell script but should be very easy to modify:
- Create a file bookmarks.txt with one url per line (In firefox you can just right click a folder in bookmark manager and copy and then paste it in a txt)
- Make sure you have an adb connection to the phone and the Vanadium app is open
- Run the below script which will go over the txt file line by line, open a new tab (CTRL+T), enter the URL and wait 2 seconds for it to load, then bookmark the URL with CTRL+D
#!/bin/bash
for url in $(cat bookmarks.txt); do
# Open new tab (CTRL+T)
adb shell input keycombination KEYCODE_CTRL_LEFT KEYCODE_T
sleep 0.5
# Type URL
adb shell input text "$url"
sleep 0.3
# Press Enter
adb shell input keyevent KEYCODE_ENTER
# Wait long enough for page title to load for bookmark name
sleep 2
# Bookmark (Ctrl+D)
adb shell input keycombination KEYCODE_CTRL_LEFT KEYCODE_D
sleep 0.3
done
