Google has quietly launched its brand new Bookmark Manager extension for Chrome. Formerly known as Google Stars, the new bookmark management system replaces Chrome’s default bookmark organization structure when you install the extension. However, doing so grants you access to a bunch of new features that you aren’t going to find in Chrome by default just yet.
The actual process for creating bookmarks hasn’t changed. You can still click the little star icon in Chrome’s Omnibox when you’re on a page that you want to remember. Now, however, you can use a brand-new search feature to comb through your bookmarks for that elusive site that you know you’ve saved, but can’t seem to remember where it is.
The new Bookmark Manager extension will also allow you to sort your bookmarks into folders, which is an especially handy feature for those who are just used to saving everything (and we mean everything) into a single folder in their bookmarks menu.
The Bookmark Manager also comes with a brand new interface for perusing your bookmark collection, which is a lot prettier (and more graphical) than its previous File Explorer-like look. Instead of folders and icons, you now get giant cards which represent each site you’ve saved. These thumbnails (usually) contain an image of said site, as well as its name, a link, and a description.
As TechCrunch notes, there’s no way to organize your bookmarks into a neat, ordered list. Nor can you just click and drag these “cards” around. Here’s hoping that this functionality is added in a future update to the extension, as it can make browsing through one’s bookmarks a bit easier.
That said, the new extension also allows you to more easily share bookmarks with friends. Not individual bookmarks, mind you, since you can just copy the URL into an email or instant message. The extension grants you the ability to share your bookmark folders by making them “public”—a useful trick if you need to grant all of your friends access to the same body of research, or all of your favorite cute animal sites.
