How do I register Bookmark Sorter?

Please buy a Bookmark Sorter license.

After completing the purchase you will be able to download a personalized license file (of type .bslicense) that contains all of your license information in a signed format.

Please drag and drop this license file onto Bookmark Sorter's registration window in order to let the program read your license information.

I purchased a license for Bookmark Sorter. Where is my license number?

The license file that you downloaded (of type .bslicense) actually contains all of your license information in a signed format. You will not need a separate license number. Please use the license file to register your copy of Bookmark Sorter.

The automatic sort mode does not work. What am I doing wrong?

After registering Bookmark Sorter the automatic mode will be available.

Please select the automatic mode checkbox and then click on the push button in order to start sorting your bookmarks in the background.

When Bookmark Sorter is in automatic mode it will listen for any changes to Safari's bookmarks.

Please note that Bookmark Sorter's automatic function will wait, for at least half a minute, after a bookmark has been added before the whole list is re-sorted. The wait is needed in order to ensure that Safari and Bookmark Sorter do not overwrite each others' changes in case a user is manually reordering their bookmarks through Safari's "all bookmarks" view.

Also note that if you have bookmarks sharing for iCloud activated, Safari will re-read its bookmarks from iCloud from time to time, and these bookmarks may or may not be sorted (i.e. they may have been uploaded by a device that has an unsorted list of bookmarks.) It may therefor seem as if Bookmark Sorter is not working, but if you have the program's automatic mode activated the list will be re-sorted within a minute or two.

I do not see Bookmark Sorter in Safari's Services menu. What can I do?

OS X will re-read all services when you login to your OS X user account. Please log out of, and then in again to, your OS X user account in order to register Bookmark Sorter as a Safari Service.

Why is Bookmark Sorter not sold through the Mac App Store?

For the time being, Apple does not seem to like the idea of third party developers helping users to sort their Safari bookmarks and so any application that touches a user's Safari bookmarks will not be allowed in the App Store.

Bookmark Sorter is currently sold through FastSpring.com that is a trusted reseller of software products and services. Please visit FastSpring.com for more information.

Will you release Bookmark Sorter for iPad/iPhone/iPod?

I would like to release Bookmark Sorter for iOS but since Apple does not allow third party apps access to Safari's bookmarks on iOS it cannot currently be done.

I am however trying to figure out a way to get Safari (on OS X) to push its sorted bookmarks up to iCloud. If I succeed then all iCloud connected devices that share their bookmarks with each other will get their bookmarks sorted via iCloud if you also have at least one OS X device with Bookmark Sorter installed.

Can Bookmark Sorter help me sort my iPad/iPhone/iPod-bookmarks?

No, and yes. As it stands today there is no way to automatically sort Safari-bookmarks on iOS-devices.

But, if you are willing to jump through some hoops, it can be done. First off, if you do not have a lot of bookmarks then consider manually sorting them directly on your device(s). That said, if you do have a long list of bookmarks that you want alphabetically sorted then Bookmark Sorter can be one step in the process. Please see known issues in order to sort everything out.

Known Issues

Please note that Apple's bookmarks sharing for iCloud is still quite buggy and that it has a lot of problems that hopefully will be fixed soon.

One of the most fatal bugs is that iCloud sometimes creates thousands of duplicate bookmarks. It is supposedly quite hard to remove all of the unwanted bookmarks since they are stored on iCloud. Luckily I have yet to come across this bug, but since Bookmark Sorter has the ability to remove duplicates it should be able to also help remedy this kind of situation.

WARNING: The process that I describe here goes beyond what Bookmark Sorter was designed for and I can therefor not give you any support if something bad happens. You do this at your own risk!

That said, I do this from time to time in order to get my devices' bookmarks alphabetically sorted.

Remember to back everything up before you begin:

1. pick one Mac as your point of truth (your main machine)
2. on your main machine, copy your current bookmarks file to a safe place; e.g. use this command in Terminal.app: cp ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist ~/Desktop/ and then press return
3. turn off bookmarks-sharing for iCloud on every i-device^* (go to Settings, iCloud and switch bookmarks off), when the device asks you what to do with the previously synced iCloud bookmarks, select "Delete from my device"
4. delete all bookmarks from within Safari on every Mac and also any remaining bookmarks on your i-device(s)
5. wait for a while so that everything syncs from the Macs to iCloud (this might be as long as 10 minutes or so)
6. turn off bookmarks sharing for iCloud on every Mac (go to System Preferences, iCloud and deselect the checkbox for bookmarks)
7. on your main machine, reset the original bookmarks file; e.g. use this command in Terminal.app: cp -f ~/Desktop/Bookmarks.plist ~/Library/Safari/ and then press return
8. open the "all bookmarks"-view in Safari
9. run Bookmark Sorter; check the results in Safari, you may have to run it several times in order to weed out all duplicates and empty folders (some manual deletions may also be necessary)
10. before turning on bookmarks sharing for iCloud again, ensure that at least five or ten minutes has elapsed since you turned it off for your main machine (iCloud may need this time in order to catch up amongst all of its servers)
11. turn on iCloud bookmarks sharing for your main machine again, you will have to select to merge your bookmarks with iCloud (this is where Safari sometimes deletes all of your bookmarks and you will have to revert to step 6 above; also wait a bit longer in step 10 next time)
12. if all looks good on your main machine, then reenable bookmarks sharing for iCloud on all other machines and i-devices.

Hopefully all went well, you should now have the same alphabetically sorted list of bookmarks on all your machines and devices.
 
_{^*iPad, iPhone and/or iPod}

Please see these articles if you keep having problems with bookmarks on iCloud: ZDNet: iCloud bug creates thousands of duplicate bookmarks, How can I reset the Safari bookmarks in iCloud?, How to Fix Duplicate Bookmarks in iCloud, etcetera.