BookmarkSync

BookmarkSync is a simple program that manages the bookmarks (pinned folders) in GTK+, KDE, and Qt 5's native file pickers. I built this tool because I was using GTK+ apps (GIMP, Audacity, etc.) on KDE and constantly got frustrated by the bookmarks lists not matching up.

Some alternatives include xdg-desktop-portal to unify dialogs, but its focus is sandboxed apps, and programs outside those don't always support portals in practice. On GTK+ based DEs like XFCE and Cinnamon, an easier option may be to use GTK+ dialogs directly in Qt through QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2 or qt5ct (set standard dialogs -> GTK2).

Distribution packages

You can find bookmarksync in:

• Arch Linux AUR: bookmarksync-git
• Debian via Utopia Repository: bookmarksync

Build instructions

To compile BookmarkSync you will need qmake and the headers for KIO.

On Debian and derivatives, this is apt install qtbase5-dev libkf5kio-dev.

Then,

git clone https://github.com/jlu5/bookmarksync
cd bookmarksync/src
qmake
make -j$(nproc)

The resulting binary will be named bookmarksync.

Alternatively, you can build the project (bookmarksync.pro) using Qt Creator.

Under the hood

• GTK+ stores bookmarks in a simple plain text format at ~/.config/gtk-3.0/bookmarks, which BookmarkSync manipulates as a plain text file.
• KDE stores bookmarks in XML form at ~/.local/share/user-places.xbel. BookmarkSync uses KFilePlacesModel from KIO to edit these natively.
• Qt stores bookmarks in the Qt config file (INI format) at ~/.config/QtProject.conf. BookmarkSync uses QFileDialog methods (and hidden file dialog instances) to read and write to these.

Known limitations

• Only KDE supports custom icons for places; syncing from others will erase all custom icons.
• Only GTK+ and KDE support remote locations like sftp:// or smb:// in bookmarks: syncing from Qt will remove all remote places from the list.
• Editing bookmarks from another program while BookmarkSync is running may cause things to go out of sync. This mainly affects the Qt backend, as the KDE and GTK+ backends tend to sync faster.