Does iCloud Play Well With XMarks?

[Chupa Chupa]

Ever since XMarks was Foxmarks and iCloud was MobileMe I've used these services to keep my computers and iDevice bookmarks in sync w/o issue.

But now my iDevices do not sync UNLESS the bookmark is made on the iDevice. Xmarks works fine so all my desktop browser bookmarks are synced but it's driving me nuts that my iPhone and iPad never sync bookmarks made in any of my browsers (I use them all for different purposes).

As a last resort I'm going to turn off (delete) iCloud bookmarks in Safari on all my computers and devices and start over but before I do was wondering if there is some kind of incompatibily with iCloud bookmark syncing and Xmarks.

FWIW all my other iCloud syncing (iCal, Contacts, etc) works fine. The problem is isolated to bookmarks.

 

[Lara F]

No, there's not some innate incompatibility - I have XMarks for Safari installed (mostly for syncing with Chrome) and iCloud syncs my bookmarks to my iPhone and iPad.

 

[Chupa Chupa]

Quick follow up:

Apparently there is an issue using XMarks + iCloud bookmark sync. XMarks is apparently working on a fix -- but based on the post in their support forum that was 3 months ago and no comment from staff since. Apparently its releated to the depreciating of SyncServices in MobileMe, so maybe it's limited to people that came from that service to iCloud. Some people in the thread suggested an app called BookMacster. I'm going to give it a try.

Here is the link to the thread @ Xmarks support

 

[newagemac]

iCloud syncs bookmarks no matter if you create them on Safari on your computer or your mobile device. You shouldn't even need Xmarks anymore unless you are syncing with some other browser.

 

[AMCarter3]

I'm having difficulties with Xmarks on Firefox and Chrome. A manual sync is slow on Chrome and consistently causes Firefox to freeze. Very concerning.

 

[Growmac]

Apparently its releated to the depreciating of SyncServices in MobileMe, so maybe it's limited to people that came from that service to iCloud.

Can I suggest a rather simple workaround?

New bookmarks that you create on any iOS device will sync with Safari properly and therefore will propagate across any other browser. Job done. Same if you create them in Safari. No problem.

New bookmarks will not propagate properly to iOS via iCloud if you create on another desktop browser. But, they will make it as far as Safari on your computer.

So, if you create new bookmarks in a browser other than Safari, then just put them in the bookmarks bar, or in the root directory, or someplace else you can easily find them. Then you can go into Safari and move them to the place you actually want them.

The act of moving the bookmarks makes iCloud notice them, and therefore it is then correctly synced with all devices. Not ideal, but really quite easy and good enough until the Xmarks team can fix it properly.

 

[Regal]

Have anyone heard of a possible fix for Xmarks users?

I`m currently using Xmarks on my PC & Macbook in order to keep all bookmarks in sync and it works perfectly, however, i also have an iPhone & iPad and would very much like to have the same setup of bookmarks on these devices.

So, i tried to activate iCloud safari syncing on my Macbook & iOS devices but it didn`t the way i wanted. I was able to get the current setup of bookmarks to the iOS devices but as soon as i added or removed bookmarks from the iOS devices, they didn`t show up/disappeared from the Macbook so the syncing between Macbook and iOS devices obviously doesn`t work.

Would be awesome if Xmarks could come up with a solution for these two services to work in conjunction.