Why you can’t move bookmarks from one browser to another on iOS/Android
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You should be able to easily move your data to different services and apps. Find out how Vivaldi browser makes this possible on desktop with data portability, despite challenges on mobile.
Click here to see the full blog post
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to be fair Android doesn't make it exactly easy either, if the browser supports that you can export data to anywhere in the filesystem, but without that intermediate step you can't really do anything
and I understand that limitation, it's really a good security and privacy feature, but as a user and owner I should have the last say and be able to allow other app to read once, read always or even write once/write always storage of another app
hide it somewhere deep, require confirmation with the screen unlock, whatever, just let me do itsimilar issues exist in browser extensions space, why can't we inject ContentScripts into some specific list of websites and sites generated by other extensions (yes, I am aware of the flag allowing the latter, but that flag causes a warning to be displayed every time you launch the browser and it also requires the extension to explicitly request that permission, you can't just unlock an already made one, you'd have to modify it to make it work)
to be fair this limitation is less of an issue in Vivaldi since the most important extensions that suffer from these limitations are mouse gestures and keyboard oriented ones, but wouldn't it be nice to be able to take control of that when you need it anyway? -
I'm stuck on Safari cause a) it supports macOS's passwords, which can autofill TOTP automatically and b) it can share groups & profiles across device, while chromium browsers don't do that
p.s. I wasn't able to login to leave this comment from safari. it was redirecting to this page without authorisation -
@zakius: or you could share any sensitive information (bookmarks, passwords, etc) instead of query, so user choose where it will be handled
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This blog does not at all explain why it is not possible for the mobile browsers to allow for the export of bookmarks in the form of some sort of interchange file. Possibly in HTML that the user can then copy and take to whatever system they want to. This has been a feature in browers since netscape.
If the mobile browser can download and save a file to a user accessible location on the device (eg /downloads) surely it can write a html file with bookmarks in it, the DOCTYPE NETSCAPE-Bookmark-file would be a great format to use, sure its loosely defined but it works, and seems to be a standard that's been used for a very long time.
If freedom of movement of data and interoperability were at all a priority the feature request wouldn't be languishing at the back of the pipeline since 2020
https://forum.vivaldi.net/topic/46946/import-and-export-bookmarksCurrently the only workaround is to sync your vivaldi account (sync may not be reliable) and export from a desktop browser.
This seems like the opposite of freedom of data movement and an attempt to force people to sign up and to upload their bookmarks through your server. I'm sure that this isn't the case, but if it isn't then give people an alternative.