Import Firefox Bookmarks

Export from Firefox as HTML, not JSON — the difference decides whether anything else can read it.

Export from Firefox

  1. Open Bookmarks → Manage bookmarks, or press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+O.

  2. In the Library window, click Import and Backup in the toolbar.

  3. Choose Export Bookmarks to HTML — not "Backup", which writes a .jsonlz4 file.

  4. Save the .html file.

What survives the move

Read off the importer rather than promised in general. The export is Netscape HTML.

  • Folder tree, at any depth
  • Titles and URLs
  • Tags — Firefox writes them as TAGS="a,b,c"
  • The date each bookmark was saved
  • Keywords and search shortcuts, which are a Firefox-only concept

Clean it before you import it

A migration is the one moment when tidying costs nothing — you are touching every link anyway. Run the file through the bookmark cleaner to collapse the duplicates and find the folders holding nothing, or the converter if you want to look at the whole library in a spreadsheet first. Both run entirely in your browser; the file is never uploaded.

Import into Inspistor

  1. Open Settings → Data Transfer in the dashboard.

  2. Drop the file in. Netscape HTML is detected from the contents, not the file name.

  3. Read the preview before committing. You are told how many links, categories and tags were found before anything is written.

Bring your Firefox library across

Folder structure at any depth, tags where the export carries them, and a searchable archived copy of every page taken on the way in.

Open the importer

Frequently asked questions

How do I export bookmarks from Firefox?

Open Bookmarks → Manage bookmarks, or press Cmd/Ctrl+Shift+O. In the Library window, click Import and Backup in the toolbar. Choose Export Bookmarks to HTML — not "Backup", which writes a .jsonlz4 file. Save the .html file.

What do I lose importing from Firefox?

Keywords and search shortcuts, which are a Firefox-only concept. Everything else — folder tree, at any depth, titles and urls, tags — firefox writes them as tags="a,b,c", the date each bookmark was saved — comes across.

Is there anything to watch out for?

The Backup option in that same menu produces a .jsonlz4 file. It is compressed with a Mozilla-specific variant of LZ4 that nothing outside Firefox reads, including this importer. If you already have one and no longer have Firefox installed, restore it into a fresh Firefox profile and export again as HTML — there is no shortcut.