BookmarkSync

BookmarkSync is a simple program that manages the bookmarks (pinned folders) in GTK+, KDE, and Qt'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.

Do I need this?

On GTK+ based desktop environments like GNOME or Xfce, you can make Qt use the GTK+ file picker by setting QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk3 or QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME=gtk2. This is usually the easiest option on those environments.

Alternatively: Chrome, Firefox (with about:config override), and most sandboxed apps support XDG Desktop Portal which will automatically load the desktop environment's native file picker.

CLI mode

As of v0.3.0 there is support for running sync from the command line: $ bookmarksync --sync-from {gtk,kde,qt}.

Note that this is not truly headless, as BookmarkSync still expects a display to exist. If your environment doesn't have one available, you can switch to a dummy display with some QT overrides: $ QT_QPA_PLATFORMTHEME= QT_QPA_PLATFORM=offscreen ./bookmarksync <args>

Distribution packages

You can find bookmarksync in:

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

Build instructions

Note that BookmarkSync compiles with Qt 6 and KF6 now. If you need the Qt 5 version, use the qt5 / 0.3.x branch instead.

To compile BookmarkSync, you will need:

• cmake
• Qt 6
• KF6KIO headers
• KF6IconThemes headers

On Debian and derivatives, this is apt install cmake qt6-base-dev libkf6iconthemes-dev libkf6kio-dev.

Then clone the repository and compile it:

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

The resulting binary will be named bookmarksync.

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 refresh faster.