How to Export Mozilla Bookmarks in Firefox (2026 Guide)

Firefox keeps your bookmarks in its own internal database, not a plain file you can drag onto a USB stick. That’s fine until you switch browsers, wipe a machine, or just want a safety copy before an update goes wrong. Exporting turns that database into a bookmarks.html file — the same format Chrome, Edge, Safari, and nearly every browser built in the last two decades understands, which is what makes it worth doing before you actually need it rather than after.

This guide covers how to export Mozilla bookmarks properly: the HTML export most people need, the JSON backup Firefox makes for itself, how to check that either one worked, where the file lands on disk, and how to get it into whatever browser you’re moving to next. We’ll also cover what exporting does not protect (your open tabs) and where that gap tends to catch people off guard.

What Is the Quickest Way to Export Bookmarks in Firefox?

Open the Firefox menu, click Bookmarks, then Manage bookmarks. That opens the Library window, where Import and Backup > Export Bookmarks to HTML saves everything to one file. The whole process takes under a minute and doesn’t touch anything else on your system.

Firefox gives you two related but different tools under that same Import and Backup menu, and picking the wrong one is the most common mistake people make. One produces a portable HTML file meant for other browsers or archiving. The other produces a JSON file meant strictly for restoring inside Firefox itself. If you’re not sure which you need, the table below sorts it out by situation.

If you just landed here searching mozilla how to export bookmarks, the HTML route in the next section is almost certainly what you want. It’s the one option on this list that works no matter which browser or computer you’re headed to next. Firefox for Firefox works the same way on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so these steps don’t change by operating system — only the file paths you’d browse to afterward do. None of these five options requires an add-on or a paid tool; every one of them ships inside Firefox itself, which is worth knowing before you go looking for a third-party bookmark exporter you don’t need.

How Do I Export Mozilla Bookmarks to an HTML File?

Open the Library window from the Bookmarks menu, then use Import and Backup > Export Bookmarks to HTML and choose a save location. This is the export format built for leaving Firefox, and it’s what Mozilla’s own support documentation recommends whenever you’re transferring bookmarks to a different browser or computer.

1. Open the menu button. It’s the three horizontal lines in the top-right corner of the toolbar.
2. Click Bookmarks, then Manage bookmarks. This opens the Library window in a separate panel.
3. Click Import and Backup, then Export Bookmarks to HTML. A save dialog appears.
4. Pick a folder and save. Firefox suggests the filename bookmarks.html, but you can rename it if you like.

Jump straight to the Library. Press Ctrl + Shift + O (Cmd + Shift + O on Mac) to open the Library window directly, skipping the Bookmarks submenu entirely.

The resulting HTML file keeps your folder structure intact, including nested folders and the order you arranged them in. Open it in any browser and it reads like a plain webpage full of links organized under headings. That’s the whole point, since HTML bookmark files are a shared standard rather than something Mozilla invented for itself. Because the file is just text, you can also open it in a plain text editor if you’re curious what’s inside. You’ll see a list of nested <DL> and <A> tags, one per folder and bookmark, which is a fine way to confirm nothing looks obviously truncated before you rely on it.

How Do I Export Bookmarks in Firefox as JSON Instead of HTML?

Use the same Library window, but click Backup instead of Export Bookmarks to HTML — Firefox saves a JSON file, typically named bookmarks-<date>.json, meant for restoring inside Firefox rather than opening elsewhere. Mozilla export bookmarks tools genuinely split into these two formats for a reason: JSON preserves internal details HTML can’t represent, like tags, keywords, and precise ordering metadata.

If you’ve seen people describe export bookmarks mozilla or export bookmarks in mozilla as confusing, this is usually why — two buttons sitting right next to each other in the same menu, doing related but distinct jobs. Here’s how they compare directly.

For everyday use, stick with HTML unless you have a specific reason to want JSON — like restoring an exact prior state, including folder metadata that HTML export doesn’t carry. If you’re only backing up as insurance against your own mistakes rather than planning a move to another browser, making both takes seconds and costs nothing, so there’s little reason to pick just one.

How Do I Check That My Exported Bookmarks File Actually Worked?

Open the exported bookmarks.html file in a browser tab and look through it before you trust it with anything important — a blank or half-empty file is much easier to fix five minutes after exporting than after you’ve already wiped the old computer. Firefox doesn’t show a confirmation screen once the save dialog closes, so this check is on you.

Start with the simple stuff: does the file exist where you saved it, and is its size roughly what you’d expect for the number of bookmarks you have? A file sitting at a few bytes almost certainly means the export failed partway through, often because the save dialog was cancelled or the destination folder had a permissions problem. From there, open the file directly in a browser tab rather than importing it right away. You’ll see your folder names as headings and your bookmarks as a plain list of links underneath them, which makes it obvious at a glance whether a folder is missing or empty.

Our bookmarks viewer does the same check without needing to import anything into a live browser profile, which is useful if you’d rather inspect the file on a computer that isn’t the one you exported from. If anything looks short, go back to the Library window and export again — a second export costs nothing and takes the same few seconds as the first, so there’s no reason to import a file you’re not confident in. It’s also worth comparing the exported file’s folder count against what you remember seeing in your Bookmarks Toolbar and Bookmarks Menu, since a quick visual match is usually enough to catch anything that got skipped.

Where Does Firefox Save the Exported Bookmarks File?

Firefox saves your exported bookmarks wherever you told the save dialog to put them. There’s no fixed default location for a manual HTML export, unlike the automatic JSON backups. Those automatic backups always land in a folder called bookmarkbackups, tucked inside your Firefox profile folder.

That profile folder is worth knowing about even if you never touch it directly, because it’s also where your bookmarks database, saved logins, and browsing history live. Firefox profiles are separate from the program itself, which is why reinstalling Firefox doesn’t erase your bookmarks — the profile survives independently, and a fresh install will simply reconnect to the same profile data it finds on disk. If you want to see exactly where that folder sits on your operating system, our browser file locations tool walks through it, and our guide on Firefox profiles covers backing the whole thing up, not just the bookmarks piece.

Two file types, two folders. Manual exports go wherever you choose in the save dialog. Automatic backups always go into bookmarkbackups inside your profile, whether you ever open the Library window or not.

If you can’t remember where you saved a manual export, check your Downloads folder first — most browsers, Firefox included, default the save dialog there unless you’ve changed it. For the automatic dated backups, the bookmarkbackups folder is the only place to look, and Firefox names each file with the export date built right into it, which makes sorting by date the fastest way to find the most recent one.

How Do I Import Firefox Bookmarks Into Another Browser?

Open the target browser’s bookmark manager, find its import option, and point it at the bookmarks.html file you exported from Firefox — every major browser reads that same HTML format. The exact menu wording differs slightly by browser, but the underlying file format doesn’t change, so the same exported file works everywhere without modification.

• Chrome or Edge. Open the bookmark manager, click the three-dot menu, and choose Import Bookmarks — see our Chrome bookmark export and import guide for the Chrome side of this move.
• Safari. Use File > Import From > Bookmarks HTML File, then select the file you exported from Firefox.
• Brave or Vivaldi. Both use Chromium’s bookmark manager, so the import flow matches Chrome’s exactly.
• Back into Firefox. Use the same Library window, but choose Import Bookmarks from HTML instead of exporting.

If you’re going the other direction — bringing bookmarks, saved logins, history, and form data into Firefox from Chrome, Edge, or Safari — skip the manual export/import dance entirely and use Firefox’s built-in Import Data wizard under Settings > General. It’s a one-click wizard rather than a file you manage yourself, and it transfers more than bookmarks alone. Imported bookmarks land in a new folder inside your Bookmarks Toolbar or menu rather than merging silently into your existing structure, which makes it easy to review what came in before you keep or discard it — a small but useful habit if you’ve imported from the same source more than once and want to avoid ending up with duplicate folders.

How Do I Move Bookmarks Firefox Has Saved to a New Computer?

Export your bookmarks to HTML on the old computer, transfer that file by USB drive, cloud storage, or email, then import it on the new one — or skip the file entirely and sign in to the same Firefox Sync account on both machines. Both approaches work; which one’s better depends on whether you’re moving once or want bookmarks to stay matched going forward.

A one-time export and import is simpler if you’re retiring the old computer for good and don’t need continuous syncing afterward. Sync makes more sense if you’ll keep using both machines and want new bookmarks to show up everywhere automatically, without repeating the export step every time. Either way, do the export before you start uninstalling anything or handing the old machine off. It only takes a minute, and there’s no way to get bookmarks back out of a computer you no longer have access to. If you’re switching to a different browser on the new machine rather than staying with Firefox, our guide on moving Chrome bookmarks to a new computer covers that direction too, since the file format travels the same way regardless of which browser sent it.

How Do I Restore Firefox Bookmarks From a Backup?

Open the Library window, click Import and Backup, then Restore, and choose either a dated automatic backup from the list or Choose File to point at your own saved copy. Firefox lists its automatic backups by date, so you can pick the most recent one or go back further if the problem’s been there a while.

Because Firefox keeps the last 15 automatic backups without you doing anything, you’re rarely starting from zero even if you never exported manually. That said, those automatic backups only go back so far — if the bookmark you lost predates all 15 saved copies, only a manual export you made yourself will have it, which is the strongest argument for exporting occasionally even when nothing seems to be going wrong.

Why Is My Exported Bookmarks File Missing Folders, Favicons, or Passwords?

An exported bookmarks.html file only ever contains bookmarks and their folder structure. It was never going to include passwords, history, or form data, and favicons sometimes don’t travel cleanly between browsers either. That last part trips people up the most, since a bookmark that showed a site’s little icon in Firefox can show a blank page icon after importing somewhere else.

Favicons are cached separately from the bookmark itself in most browsers, so when you import a bookmarks.html file into a fresh browser profile, there’s no cached icon yet to display until you visit each site again. It’s cosmetic and resolves itself with normal browsing, not a sign anything went wrong with the export. Missing folders are a different story and usually mean the export happened before you finished organizing, or a subfolder was deliberately excluded — the HTML export includes everything under Bookmarks Toolbar and Bookmarks Menu by default, so a genuinely missing folder is worth double-checking against the Library window directly rather than assuming the export is broken.

If you searched how to export import firefox bookmarks expecting one step to handle logins too, that’s the passwords piece specifically — bookmark exports never carry them by design, security reasons aside. Use the Import Data wizard, or Firefox Sync, if passwords need to move along with everything else. Treat the bookmarks file, the passwords, and the open tabs you still haven’t bookmarked as three separate jobs, each with its own tool, rather than expecting one export to cover all three at once.

How Is Firefox Sync Different From Exporting Bookmarks?

Firefox Sync keeps your bookmarks continuously updated across every device signed in to the same Mozilla account, while exporting creates a fixed snapshot at one point in time — and Mozilla is explicit that Sync isn’t meant to replace a real backup. Turning Sync on is straightforward: click Sign in from the toolbar or menu, enter your email, and Sync enables automatically once you’re signed in.

Sync is not a backup, per Mozilla. Because Sync continuously overwrites synced data as you make changes, Mozilla states it “does not provide a true backup service, nor is it intended to be used as one.” If you delete a bookmark on one device, Sync removes it everywhere — an export or JSON backup made beforehand is the only way back.

You can choose exactly what Sync shares from Settings, toggling bookmarks, passwords, open tabs, and history independently, so it’s not all-or-nothing. That last item (open tabs) is where Sync and Firefox’s own bookmark tools genuinely diverge from a session tool like BelayTab’s Sync feature: Firefox Sync shares which tabs are open on your other signed-in devices, but it doesn’t preserve a named, restorable snapshot of a whole browsing session the way BelayTab does. A snapshot means you can go back to exactly how a window looked an hour or a week ago; live tab sharing only ever shows you what’s open right now. Our guide to Firefox Sync covers the full setup if you want bookmarks and tabs matched across every device you use.

How Do I Keep My Firefox Bookmarks and Tabs Safe for Good?

Export or back up your bookmarks regularly using the steps above, and separately protect your open tabs with a tool built for that job, since bookmarks and open tabs are genuinely different things that need different protection. A bookmark is something you deliberately saved; an open tab is often something you haven’t gotten around to saving yet, and it’s usually the tab that disappears first when a browser crashes or a computer dies.

This is where BelayTab fits in, and it’s worth being precise about what it does and doesn’t do: BelayTab never reads or touches your bookmarks. It doesn’t have permission to and doesn’t need it. What it does is save your open windows and tabs (the exact tab groups, pinned tabs, and order) as a named session automatically, on a five-minute timer and again when a window closes, with the last 20 versions of each session kept in a free Recovery screen. Notably, BelayTab can also export a saved session in the HTML bookmarks format, which is a genuinely handy trick if you want to turn a pile of open research tabs into a shareable, bookmark-style file without bookmarking each one by hand — see import and export for the full list of formats.

Between a recent bookmark export and BelayTab quietly snapshotting your open windows, you end up covering both halves of the problem — the links you meant to keep, and the ones you just hadn’t gotten to yet. Grab it from belaytab.com/download and set both habits up once; neither needs repeating manually after that.