How to sync bookmarks across devices without mixing profiles

The easy half

Getting bookmarks onto a second computer is a solved problem: sign the same profile into the same account on both machines with sync turned on, and the bookmarks are there. If you run one profile, stop here — nothing else is needed.

The half people get wrong

The trouble starts when the second machine is set up in a hurry. The usual shortcut is to sign the new laptop into whichever account is handy, which quietly merges a work profile and a personal one, or puts personal bookmarks on a company device. Undoing that later is tedious, and on a managed device it may not be entirely up to you.

Set the second machine up properly

1. Recreate the same profiles, with the same names and colours, before signing into anything.
2. Sign each profile into its own account — the same pairing as on the first machine.
3. Turn on native sync in each profile, which handles that profile's own data.
4. Install your cross-profile extension in the profiles that share a folder, so the shared set converges across all four profiles rather than only two.

The result: each profile's own bookmarks travel by native sync, and the small shared set travels horizontally by cross-device sync. Nothing is merged that should not be.

Machines you do not own

On a client's laptop or a shared workstation, signing a browser into your personal account is the wrong move — it leaves history, passwords and autofill behind. Install the extension, receive only the folders you nominated, and remove it when the engagement ends. Nothing else of yours was ever on the machine.

Phones

Mobile browsers do not support desktop extensions, so cross-profile syncing does not extend to a phone. Native account sync still carries a profile's own bookmarks to mobile Chrome or Edge, which covers most of what people actually need on a phone.

Checklist

• Same profiles, same names, same colours on both machines.
• Each profile signed into its own account, never a shared one.
• Native sync on per profile.
• Shared folder nominated in the profiles that need it, on both machines.
• Sync now pressed once before you switch machines.