Continuing on where other apps and services have left off, BookMacster merges and manages bookmarks in Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Camino, iCab, Opera and OmniWeb, and on the web with Delicious, Pinboard, and Google Bookmarks. When used with a file-syncing service in the cloud such as Dropbox™ or Jungle Disk™, BookMacster takes cross-browser bookmark syncing on the road to any Mac. BookMacster keeps bookmarks alphabetized (sorted), verified, and checked for duplicates. BookMacster supports tags, comments, and shortcuts. BookMacster users can add bookmarks directly from within browsers, and access all bookmarks while in any app from their menu bar, and OS X Lion users can access history via Lion's Auto Save and Versions features.
BookMacster is the Bookmarks Master for the Mac, and is the successor to Bookdog. Although upgrades are available, even free upgrades for recent purchases, we recommend that new users with Mac OS 10.5 or later should start with BookMacster.
What's your Usage Style?
One reason we call BookMacster The Bookmarks Master for the Mac is because, depending on how you count, it’s actually several apps in one. To give you a quick start, we’ve identified three typical Usage Styles.
Usage Style 1. You use only one web browser, such as Safari or Firefox or Chrome, but you wish to add capabilities such as sorting (alphabetizing), finding duplicates and verifying bookmarks to its built-in bookmarks storage.
Usage Style 2. You use multiple web browsers (Safari and Firefox, etc.) and wish to keep their built-in bookmarks synchronized with each other.
Usage Style 3. You want a more full-featured, cross-browser and portable replacement for the built-in bookmarks storage in your web browser(s), like URL Manager Pro except updated for today’s browsers.
Although picking a Usage Style helps you to get started, you can switch at any time, or mix things up to make your own Usage Style. And, regardless of style, activating BookMacster's cloud-syncing will sync these same bookmarks to all of your Macs, automatically.
What it can do for you…
The Bookmarkshelf you'll create in BookMacster is a document file which not only contains and manages your bookmarks, but also knows the Clients – web browsers and other places where you want them synced with. BookMacster can synchronize bookmarks with Safari, Firefox, Google Chrome, Camino, Google Bookmarks, Diigo, Pinboard, iCab, Delicious, Opera and OmniWeb. Most users combine all of their bookmarks into a single Bookmarkshelf. By checking a couple of boxes, you can move your Bookmarkshelf into your cloud folder using your preferred cloud-syncing service such as Dropbox, and tell a BookMacster Agent to keep your bookmarks synced across multiple browsers and multiple Macs. An Agent can also keep your bookmarks sorted (alphabetized), verified, and checked for duplicates. A typical Agent might automatically import bookmarks from one or more browsers or from the cloud whenever bookmarks changes are detected, merge them together, perform sorting or checking for duplicates, and then automatically export back out to one or more browser apps, and push them back to your Dropbox cloud so that your other Macs will get them.
Besides importing, you can add bookmarks directly to BookMacster using a bookmarklet, or in Firefox and Chrome, a convenient toolbar button or menu item. And besides exporting, you can access your bookmarks using BookMacster's menulet or Dock menu.
You can search for bookmarks, reorganize, and edit bookmarks' attributes. BookMacster carefully tracks and stores all these attributes — tags, shortcuts, keywords, descriptions, dates, folder location, and more, so that nothing is lost when importing and exporting back and forth from one browser to another. In addition to the browser apps on your Mac account, BookMacster can access bookmarks in user accounts on other networked Macs, and in loose files.
Upgrade from Bookdog
Although Bookdog will continue to be updated when necessary to maintain system and browser compatibility, new capabilities and features will be added to BookMacster only. Scroll down for the current special introductory price discounts for Bookdog users. (Bookdog Licensees: In order to obtain your discount automatically, do not delete your Bookdog preferences, and do not use any of those app-deleting or app-zapping apps on Bookdog until after you have purchased a BookMacster license.)
BookMacster's Help Book contains a Guide for Bookdog Graduates.
Movies
Prepare your speakers or headphones – our movies have audio tracks. Before clicking, make your browser window big because some browsers do not allow you to resize your window after a movie starts. The QuickTime "Q" will appear while the movie is downloading – good time to check email or do a few exercises.
If you feel that something you'd like to do would benefit from a movie, please request on our Forum.
Syncing 5 browsers
This first movie shows a new user creating a new Bookmarkshelf to combine bookmarks from five web browsers, and then adding a bookmark to one of them and showing how it appears in the other browsers. Running time 4:53, 664 x 636 pixels, 13.4 MB. Produced 2011-05-31 with BookMacster version 1.5.4.
If you watch carefully, although the narrator missed it, at 4:18 into the movie, just after the "4-5 minutes later…" caption shows on the screen, the new MacUpdate bookmark magically appears in Chrome.
Here are some of the "bonus out-takes" that you might want to read before actually trying it yourself:
• Clients are places where you have bookmarks. Clients are usually, but not always, web browsers.
• The choices of Clients given when the new Bookmarkshelf is created consist of (1) the supported web browsers for which BookMacster finds bookmarks in your Macintosh user account, and (2) the accounts of supported web app accounts which BookMacster finds in your Mac OS X keychain. More Clients, such as other web app accounts, loose files, and web browser bookmarks on other Macintosh user accounts, may be added later in the Settings ▸ Clients tab.
Demo: New Bookmark Syncs to 8 Browsers
This "gee-whiz" movie is not a How To, although you can "try this at home" if you want to and have 8 web browsers on your Mac. It shows how, after configuring a Bookmarkshelf with an Agent, a bookmark added to one browser gets copied to the other seven. To make things easier to watch, we deleted all of the bookmarks in all of the browsers before we started. Running time 3:32, 664 x 636 pixels, 13.4 MB. Produced 2011-06-01 with BookMacster version 1.5.4.
Bookdog User gets Google Chrome
This pair of movies show how a Bookdog user upgrades to BookMacster, and is now able to sync together Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome.
Part One shows the setup on one Mac. It runs 3:05, 629x434 pixels, 9.5 MB. Produced 2010-10-30 with BookMacster version 1.3.1.
Part Two shows the additional setup to sync to a second Mac via Dropbox. It runs 1:11, 7.1 MB, same size, date and version.
Notes on these movies:
• In Part One, if the user had been using Bookwatchdog and a translation was evident, BookMacster would have created an equivalent Agent automatically. But either way, the result is the same.
• BookMacster's Help Book has more details on Dropbox syncing.
Google Bookmarks How-To
Google Bookmarks and other Web App Clients are not presented during the New Bookmarkshelf wizard, but are easily added from the Settings ▸ Clients tab.
This quick movie runs 24 seconds, 1.4 MB. Produced 2011-08-11 with BookMacster version 1.6.5.
Bookmarks on Another Mac
BookMacster is able to import bookmarks from and export bookmarks to a user account on another Mac. Now first let us say that if you have two Macs, and you want all of your data, including documents, music, pictures etc. synced as well as bookmarks, there are ways to do that which will bring your bookmarks along for the ride.
However, for one-time operations, or if bookmarks is all you're interested in, you can set up an Other Macintosh Account type of Client in any Bookmarkshelf.
Here's how it works. This movie runs 2:13, 744x576 pixels, 6.5 MB. Produced 2011-06-24 with BookMacster version 1.5.8.
Help and Documentation
BookMacster comes with an Apple Help Book in its Help menu. The Help Book for the latest version of BookMacster is available online, here.
Trying and Buying
Free Demo (Trial)
Simply download BookMacster and start using it. When you attempt to save or export bookmarks, click the "Demo" button. In a few seconds, BookMacster will request, retrieve and install your Demo license which will be good for 3 days. You may do this 3 times, thus receiving 9 days of active demo time.
What is the Basic License?
The Basic License allows operation of BookMacster on your choice of either (a) one user on multiple Macs or (b) multiple users on one Mac. You'll also get free updates for at least one year. This is spelled out in our license.
Introductory Pricing
For a limited time, BookMacster is being introduced at the special price of $22.95 USD. We also offer volume and academic licensing, and the following special introductory pricing for Bookdog licensees:
| Time since Bookdog Purchase | Price for BookMacster | |
| Up to 12 months | $0.00 USD | |
| 12 to 18 months | $8.95 USD | |
| 18 to 24 months | $16.95 USD | |
| over 24 months | $19.95 USD |
How do I get my discount for being a Bookdog user?
Automatically, of course! When you click "Purchase", BookMacster looks for the License Information in your Bookdog preferences. If found, it is sent to our server which looks up the date of your purchase, and returns an order form with the price as indicated above.
How to Buy?
To purchase a Basic license, launch BookMacster and click in the main menu:
"Mac", "Macintosh", "Mac OS X", "AppleScript" and "Automator" are trademarks of Apple Inc., registered in the U.S. and other countries. "Dropbox" is a registered trademark of Dropbox in San Francisco. "Google" is a registered trademark of Google Inc. "OmniWeb" is a registered trademark of Omni Development Inc. "Opera" is a registered trademark of Opera Software AS Corp. Norway. "Firefox" and "Camino" are registered trademarks of Mozilla Foundation Corp. California. "Shiira" may be a registered trademark of The Shiira Project.
Sheep Systems is not affiliated with any of these entities.