How To Sync Your Firefox Bookmarks To iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad

Posted January 28, 2012 by Charlie Pryor in iDevice

Anybody who’s used the Mozilla Firefox browser before would likely agree that it’s a MUCH better alternative to Internet Explorer. Lots of people believe it’s better than Safari on Mac as well (It is). Some people even prefer it over Chrome (weirdos), but up until recently, there really hasn’t been a very good way of getting your iPhone to work in sync with your Firefox browser on the Mac or PC.

This is true of a lot of things, including bookmarks, the essential panel of custom options we use every day to cut through all the bull and get right down to what we want in a hurry. However, syncing bookmarks from Firefox to an iPhone doesn’t have to be restricted. It doesn’t have to be difficult at all actually. All you need is a bit of knowledge. I’m happy to provide that, as long as you say “please”, or your smart enough to just continue down the page.

… you should still say please though. It’s the polite thing to do.

You’ll be using one of two methods. Either one is fine, as long as it ends up working for you.

Method 1 – Export / Import
This method isn’t really the best solution, in my opinion, because it involves a bit of cheating, and that cheating will need to be repeated should you need to add a bookmark later int he future. In this method, you’ll be exporting the bookmarks from your beloved Firefox browser, into that dreadful Safari browser. You can do this, as follows:

On your PC, where you have bookmarks on Firefox, just export the bookmarks as HTML.
To do this, go to Bookmarks → Show All Bookmarks.
Now, choose the Import and Backup → Export HTML…
Save the file to someplace you can access fast.
Now, open Safari.
File – Import Bookmarks
Choose the file you just saved.

Once this is complete, just get your iPhone syncing with your Mac or PC. Make sure Sync Safari Bookmarks is checked inside your “Info” tab for the device in iTunes. You will now have the same bookmarks inside Firefox and Safari (provided you had no bookmarks at all in Safari… well yeah).

Method 2 – Firefox Home

Firefox Home is a simple app you can download on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. In this case, it works via Firefox Sync, which is a service that syncs your personal bookmarks and stuff from your computer Firefox browser, to the cloud. For this to work, you’ll need to have Firefox Sync enabled in your browser

Firefox Home is a syncing service, and not an actual browser. It syncs data to your iPhone from your computer browser, working “from the cloud.” You’ll be able to open everything from Safari when it finishes it’s business, and your bookmarks, using this method, will always remain synced as long as you are using Firefox Home to do it. It’ll also keep track of your tabs, and allows you to search from your history, bookmarks etc. easily as well.

firefox, iPhone

About the Author

Charlie Pryor

Charlie is a technology nut, and a big fan of Apple products. While attending college at Grand Valley State, he uses much of his free time every day answering questions on facebook. He founded HotTips! back in January 2010, and believes that anybody can learn anything if they have the right teacher.