If only Chrome has a better bookmarks manager but alas, it doesn’t. So we are left without a choice but to make the most out of its native bookmarks tool but that doesn’t mean that we cannot improve the way it works and even the way it looks. What I’m saying is that there are a bunch of apps on the Web Store that you can use to customize the look and feel of your Chrome browser’s bookmarks manager. One good example of this is the browser app called “Dewey Bookmarks”.

What is it and what does it do

Main Functionality

Dewey Bookmarks is a simple browser app for Chrome that you can use to improve the look and feel of your browser’s native bookmarks manager. With the help of this app, you can add custom tags and screenshots to your bookmarks. You can even organize and sort them by date, title and URL. Aside from this, Dewey Bookmarks also flaunts a grid-like interface in which you can just scroll and view your bookmarks through their screenshots or thumbnails. It also adds a large search box on top of your bookmarks list.

Pros

• Easy to use
• Easy to configure
• Lightweight and responsive
• Features a clean “grid-like” UI that previews the content of your bookmarks as screenshots
• You can sort your bookmarks by date, title and URL
• You can edit and add custom tags to your existing bookmarks
• Features three advanced search options – search by tag, URL or title

Cons

• It could take a while before the screenshots appear
• You cannot adjust or change its layout – ex. small thumbnails, large thumbnails, list view with thumbnails, etc.
• You cannot select, edit or delete multiple items

Discussion

With Dewey Bookmarks, you can browse your bookmarks in an entirely different manner. As a matter of fact, you can use this app instead of viewing your bookmarks thru your browser’s default bookmarks manager. Anyways, what’s great about this app is that it flaunts a “grid-like” layout that lists down all of the websites and links that you’ve bookmarked. So instead of viewing your bookmarked items as nested folders, you get to view them all as tiles with screenshots. You also get to manage your bookmarked items using custom tags. Speaking of which, it is also important to note that this browser app will treat the folders in your bookmarks managers as tags.

Another interesting feature of this app is its custom search function. By default, you can just type a keyword or phrase on its search bar and it will give you a list of results regardless of the item’s tag, title or URL. Now, if you want to narrow down your search, you can just use its custom search commands like “tag:{tag}”, “url:{url}” and “title:{title}”. Say, for example, if you want to search for items with the “tech” tag, you can just type the command “tag:tech” sans the quotes.

Anyways, what I like about Dewey Bookmarks is that it’s easy to use. It’s also lightweight and responsive and it gives a new flavor to your browser’s plain-looking list of bookmarks. I just noticed that it is focused more on improving the way your bookmarked items are being presented so it lacks options for better bookmark management. Nonetheless, it serves as a decent choice for those who wants to view their bookmarked items in a grid-like style with screenshots as thumbnails.

I just find it a bit disappointing that it could take a while before the screenshots for your bookmarked pages would fully appear. This usually happens if you have a lot of bookmarks. Other than this, the said browser app will also not allow you to select and delete multiple items at once. It also doesn’t offer any other layout styles. It would be nice if it would add more layout choices like small thumbnail view, large thumbnail view, list view, etc.

Conclusion and download link

If you want to try a different way of browsing through your bookmarks, then you might as well try using Dewey Bookmarks. What’s great about it is that it lets you add custom tags and screenshots to your bookmarked items. This way, you can quickly get a glimpse of what each link is all about. It may not be the best-looking bookmarks tool that I’ve seen but it is still worth checking out.

Price: Free

Version reviewed: 2.0.2

Requires: Google Chrome on Windows XP, Vista, 7, 8, Linux and Mac OS X

Dewey Bookmarks on Chrome Web Store