How to share Chrome bookmarks with someone who will actually use them

Chrome shares bookmarks with your devices, not with your people

You have a folder called Client Onboarding with thirty-one links in it. The new hire needs those exact thirty-one links, today. Chrome has no button for that. Bookmark sync signs into your Google account and copies your bookmarks to your other Chrome installs — laptop, desktop, phone. It was never built to hand a folder to a colleague, a contractor, or your sister.

So everyone improvises, and the improvisation is where it goes wrong. Every workaround for sharing Chrome bookmarks is either a snapshot that goes stale or a message that gets buried. Pick the one that matches how long the links need to live.

Option 1: export an HTML file and send it

This is the only native path, and it takes about fifteen seconds.

Two catches. Chrome exports everything, not one folder, so the recipient gets your whole tree including the shopping links unless they prune it by hand. And the file is a photograph. Fix a dead URL tomorrow and their copy is still dead. Good for a one-time handoff before you leave a job; useless for a list anyone maintains.

• Open chrome://bookmarks — or press Ctrl+Shift+O (Cmd+Option+B on a Mac).
• Click the three-dot menu at the top right of the bookmark manager, not Chrome's own menu.
• Choose Export bookmarks.
• Save the file. Chrome names it something like bookmarks_8_21_26.html.
• Send it. The other person opens their own bookmark manager, three-dot menu → Import bookmarks, and picks the file.

Option 2: paste the links into a doc or a chat message

Most teams land here. Someone drops twelve URLs into a pinned message or a shared doc, and it holds for about a week. Then the pinned message is four thousand messages up, two links redirect to a login wall, and the doc exists in three versions with different titles. Chat fails by decay. Docs fail because nobody thinks to open a doc when what they want is a link.

For five links you will use twice, this is genuinely the right answer. Do not build a system for a grocery list.

Option 3: put them on a board that stays current

A shared bookmark manager fixes the part Chrome will not: one copy of the links, many people reading it, and edits that land for everyone immediately. In Linksley you create a board, group links into categories (with one level of subcategories under those), and share the board with a person or a group. Nobody re-exports anything.

Moving your existing Chrome folders across is one step. Export the HTML file as above, then open Import & export in the sidebar and drop it in — each folder becomes a category on a new board. See how to export Chrome bookmarks if you want the file details first.

Sharing is per person. You can mark someone view-only, and that cap is enforced in the browser extension too, not just in the web app. When they leave, you revoke access in one action and every link stays with the workspace. The part people notice on day two is the new tab: the extension can make your boards the new-tab page, so the shared links sit on the most-visited page of the workday instead of inside a folder you forgot you made.