iCloud and Bookmarks

[RogersDA]

We have several Apple devices, and just starting getting organized with iCloud.

First, on an iPad, I enabled iCloud's Bookmarks.

On our Macs I did the same. In Safari on the Macs the iCloud bookmarks do not show on the Bookmarks menu. The only way to show them is to select Bookmarks - Show All Bookmarks, and even then they are on the left side panel.

On the iPad, the iCloud bookmarks are listed under the Bookmarks menu. The bookmarks menu folder has bookmarks from one of my Macs.

How can we get all bookmarks to show on the main Bookmark menu for all devices, or is this not possible?

 

[george-brooks]

Now that everything is synced to iCloud, you should be able to get them the way you want them on one device and then they should push to all of the others.

 

[thunderbunny]

Now that everything is synced to iCloud, you should be able to get them the way you want them on one device and then they should push to all of the others.

In theory yes, but recently on iOS devices I've had to switch bookmarks off and on again in iCloud to get them all to sync properly.

 

[Tinmania]

Now that everything is synced to iCloud, you should be able to get them the way you want them on one device and then they should push to all of the others.

In theory.

In practice iCloud bookmark syncing sucks. Even Mobile Me did a better job.

Worse, there is no good way to control syncing with iCloud. With Mobile Me at least I could wipe the bookmarks contained in MM and replace with those on my mac or pc--or vice versa. With iCloud this is not possible or at least not easily.

The only thing that can be done is turning bookmark syncing off then back on. And if you do that your only options are Merge and Cancel. Cancel simply leaves bookmarks syncing off. Merge adds to iCloud but does not wipe iCloud first. To me this is a poorly designed mechanism. There should be two other options: "replace iCloud bookmarks with the bookmarks on this computer" and "replace the bookmarks on this computer with the bookmarks from iCloud." That way I could start with, say, my main mac and use its bookmarks to load up iCloud--replacing, not merging, whatever is there now. Prior to that I would have bookmark syncing off on other devices. I would then turn syncing back on on those devices and choose to use the bookmarks from iCloud when turning it back on.

I feel it is a catch 22 situation: device A is setup the way I like it then device B does its thing and messes it up. Often I get duplicates.

As of right now my situation is similar to the OP: The only bookmarks I see when I click on Bookmarks in the menu bar are those that are in the bookmarks bar--which I already have access to in the, well, bookmarks bar. I have to choose show all bookmarks to see bookmarks in the bookmarks menu. Actually it is "BookmarksMenu" under the "Bookmarks" section in the sidebar. There is another "Bookmarks Menu" (this time with a space) under the collections menu that is empty.

In iOS I see two "Bookmarks Menu," one being empty (both spelled with a space between the words).

It is almost as if bookmarks syncing was an afterthought and whipped up in an afternoon with no further effort.



Michael

 

[RogersDA]

Thanks for the responses.

Bookmark syncing certainly appears to be poorly implemented between iOS devices and laptops/desktops.