Quick Answer
Open Chrome on desktop. Click the three-dot menu in the top-right corner. Choose Bookmarks and lists, then Bookmark manager. In the Bookmark manager page, click the three-dot icon on the right side of the blue header bar (next to the search box, not the main browser menu). Pick Export bookmarks. Save the HTML file somewhere safe.
That single HTML file contains your full bookmark tree with folder structure intact. It imports cleanly into Firefox, Safari, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, and any other browser. The export is local-only; Chrome does not need to be signed in to your Google account for it to work.
The desktop export flow
| Step | Where |
|---|---|
| 1. Three-dot menu | Top-right of the Chrome window |
| 2. Bookmarks and lists, then Bookmark manager | Submenu (or use Ctrl+Shift+O / Cmd+Option+B) |
| 3. Three-dot icon | Right side of the blue header inside Bookmark manager |
| 4. Export bookmarks | Dropdown item |
| 5. Save | Save As prompt, choose location and filename |
Step 1: open the Bookmark manager
The fastest route is the keyboard shortcut. On Windows or Linux press Ctrl + Shift + O. On Mac press Cmd + Option + B. Chrome opens chrome://bookmarks/ in a new tab.
If you prefer the menus, click the three vertical dots in the top-right corner of any Chrome window. Hover over Bookmarks and lists. Click Bookmark manager. Same destination.
Step 2: open the export menu
The Bookmark manager has its own toolbar. The thing to watch for is that there are now two sets of three-dot icons on the screen. The big one in the very top right is the main Chrome menu. The smaller one, embedded in the blue header bar of the manager itself (to the right of the Search bookmarks field), is the one you want. Click it.
A short dropdown appears with Add new bookmark, Add new folder, Import bookmarks, and Export bookmarks. Click Export bookmarks. The OS Save As prompt opens.
Step 3: save the HTML file somewhere durable
The default filename is bookmarks_YYYY_MM_DD.html. Keep the .html extension. Pick a location that is not on the local C: drive only; put it on a USB drive, a cloud folder (Drive, iCloud, OneDrive, Dropbox), or both. The file is small (usually well under 1 MB even for very large libraries) so storing several dated copies is cheap insurance.
Importing the file into another browser
- Firefox: Bookmarks menu, Manage bookmarks, Import and Backup, Import Bookmarks from HTML.
- Safari (Mac): File menu, Import From, Bookmarks HTML File.
- Microsoft Edge: Settings menu, Favorites, Manage favorites, three-dot icon, Import favorites, Favorites or bookmarks HTML file.
- Brave, Vivaldi, Opera: all three browsers are Chromium-based and use exactly the same Bookmark manager flow as Chrome. Import is one click in the same three-dot menu.
- Chrome on a new computer: the easiest path is to sign in with your Google account and let Sync re-populate. If you do not want to use Sync, run the same Bookmark manager flow and choose Import bookmarks.
Mobile Chrome: there is no export option
Chrome on Android and iPhone does not include a bookmark export. If your bookmarks live only on a phone, sign in with your Google account on the phone (Settings, Sync and Google services, Sync, turn on Bookmarks). The bookmarks will sync to any desktop Chrome where you sign in with the same account, and from there you can export the HTML file.
How often should you back up?
Most people accumulate bookmarks slowly enough that a monthly export is more than enough. Two situations call for an immediate export:
- Before signing out of, or deleting, your Google account.
- Before resetting Chrome to defaults or reinstalling the OS.
If your bookmarks are critical to your work (legal research, journalism, anything where the tree is a curated knowledge base), set a calendar reminder for a quarterly export. The whole flow takes under a minute.
Exporting just one folder
The HTML export is all-or-nothing; it always contains the full tree. If you only want to migrate one folder, the workaround is to export the full file, open it in any text editor or browser (it is human-readable HTML), and either delete the sections you do not want or import the full file into the target browser and then prune. A second option: in the Bookmark manager, right-click the folder you want to keep and create a copy somewhere, then before the export, temporarily delete the folders you do not want and run the export. Re-import the deleted folders from the previous backup. This is more fiddly than it sounds; for most people the full export plus a quick post-import cleanup is faster.
About the file format
The exported file uses the Netscape Bookmark File Format, a standard from the original Netscape Navigator that every major browser has read for the past 25 years. That is why Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge can all read the same file. The folder structure is preserved as nested DL/DT tags; each bookmark is an A tag with the URL in HREF. You can open the file in any browser as a viewable list if you ever lose access to a browser entirely. That alone is a strong argument for keeping a copy in cloud storage.
What does not export
- Saved passwords (export those separately from Chrome's password manager).
- Browsing history.
- Open tab groups.
- Extensions and their data.
- Reading list items (Chrome's Reading List is separate from bookmarks).
If you are migrating an entire profile, sign in with the same Google account on the new install and turn on Sync. That carries history, passwords, extensions, and tab groups along with the bookmarks. The HTML export is for the cases where you specifically want only the bookmarks, or where you are switching browsers entirely.
The takeaway
Three-dot menu, Bookmarks and lists, Bookmark manager, three-dot icon inside the manager's blue header, Export bookmarks. Save the HTML file to cloud storage. That file is your full bookmark library in a format every browser since 2000 can read. Do this before any browser reinstall, any account migration, and at least quarterly as a routine backup.
