Workaround: Preserve (most) timestamps when syncing between Chrome and Firefox

[digicommons]

While slowly transitioning away from Chrome towards Firefox, I wanted to make sure that my bookmark collection stays in sync. For this Floccus seemed to be the tool of choice.

Unfortunately, when pulling bookmarks through Floccus, Firefox decided to reset the Added and Last Modified timestamps to now. This is a limitation of the browser API, not Floccus: #1437 (reply in thread)

Fortunately, there is a workaround that preserves all Added and most of the Last Modified timestamps:

1. Export Chrome bookmarks to HTML (Ctrl+Shift+O to open the Bookmark manager, then click the three-dot-menu and finally "Export bookmarks")
2. Import bookmarks_MM_DD_YY.html to Firefox (Ctrl+Shift+O to open the Bookmark manager, select "Import and Backup", then click "Import Bookmarks from HTML...")
3. Now, Chrome's top-level bookmarks folders have been imported into Firefox' top-level folder "Bookmarks Menu"
4. Move bookmarks and subfolders (e.g. Bookmarks Bar, Other Bookmarks) to "Bookmarks Toolbar" or "Other Bookmarks" to match hierarchy of source browser. NOTE: This will reset the Last Modified timestamp on bookmarks located at the top level as well as on folders at the top level. Bookmarks in subfolders retain the Last Modified timestamp, as they haven't been modified directly.
5. Set up Floccus to sync bookmarks

If in doubt, pause syncing on the source browser, then pull changes through Floccus to target browser. Check if timestamps have been preserved and if Floccus considers hierarchies to be syncable.

Known issues: This approach is not suitable for syncing the Mobile Bookmarks folder, see "Some of my topmost folders are missing in one of my browsers. How can I avoid this?" in the Floccus FAQ.