Automatic #tagging, categorizing and searching of bookmarks using AI

[Mutzu]

Noble knights,
PLEASE BRING order to the chaotic pile of roaming, riotous writings!

This could be done within a tab.

[forrie]

AI for Bookmarks Organization and Categorization

Integrate AI to help organize, sort and categorize bookmarks. 

Like many people, I've hoarded bookmarks over time.  I also tend to CTRL-D (save bookmark) and "I'll do it later" and of course I never do (GRIN).   Imagine having an AI function that will automatically sort these saved items in a meaningful way -- based on some essential training and fine-tuned with user feedback.  Dead links could be detected and sorted (or deleted).

I think this would be a very appealing core feature of the browser.  Nobody else is doing this, that I can tell.

[forrie]

So to prove that this is doable, I uploaded my Firefox bookmarks JSON file to ChatGPT.  Literally, it's saved me hours (days?) of frustrating work.  Now, with an API and proper instruction to the AI, this could be integrated into the browser and fine-tuned based on user preferences.

Embarassingly, I have bookmarks that I've hoarded going back to 2010!  I assume many of those are dead links, but I also took the "Other Bookmarks" (the ones I collect because I'm too lazy) and it's helped organize and categorize.

[Barnabas]

I find the window annoyingly small for a long time now. Unfortunately I can't find a 3rd party plugin to replace it. At least the window needs handles to enlarge it. Ideally it restores the previous size. I keep lots and lots of bookmarks. AI would be a nice addition, but my folder structure is sacrosanct.

[Mutzu]

Great! Thank you for your engagement, @forrie! I agree with every point you mention. I've already spent hours for sorting my bookmarks. 😅

I found a plugin, Spellbook, that makes it possible to search for a folder within the bookmarks when adding a new one.

This saves me some time since I have so many categories and the native bookmark dialog is pretty cumbersome to find the right folder quickly.

[lionelw]

Love this idea, and I think the add-on developer community can come up with solutions, taking the burden off core Firefox developers. But to do that, we need a WebExtension API for accessing tags:

https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/allow-add-ons-to-have-access-to-bookmark-s-tags-field/idi-p/458

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1225916

[forrie603]

At this point, I wonder about how AI can help make this experience better for everyone.  Someone wrote an obscure process that analyzes your bookmarks and categorizes them, which led me to test ChatGPT.  I was able to upload my bookmarks and have a "discussion" about automatically categorizing and organizing.  This was a little while ago, and it did a pretty good job.   I'm sure with the correct coding, direction, etc., this could be an entirely different experience.

I am (always been!) guilty of bookmarking so much stuff.  I'm more apt to do this as placing them in a folder or tagging them take some time (and I'm lazy).  I'm sure I am not alone with this.

The real VALUE here that Mozilla could create is making it easier for us to collect and categorize data, but also this could branch into many different areas of the browser experience.

[ FYI, the signon and post process here is lousy -- I had no idea a duplicate got posted, and I can't even delete it ]

[boy]

@delthank you for posting your concerns. But the way Firefox handles AI is reassuring, any potentially sensitive stuff is done locally. AI is very capable these days and a tagging AI doesn't require that much resources so it can be done locally on the vast majority of machines. So your data are not sent anywhere outside your computer.

As for your other concern, If done right, AI is generally very good at creating tags and summarizaton. I have personal experience with local models ran through Ollama. Just give it some rules and it will do a surprisingly good job. After that you can manually re-check if you so wish.

And at the end of the day, if you don't think the feature is good enough then just don't use it. I'm sure many other people will appreciate the feature tremendously to help them organize hundreds or thousands of bookmarks.

[Neil49]

I don't get why the Bookmark process is such a pain.

I also would like to see a much larger bookmark folder assignment window. I have several thousand bookmarks assigned to a few hundred folders and sub-folders, and the current ridiculously small window that appears upon clicking on Add Bookmark makes it far too easy to make a mistake. It's similar to trying to read a long document on a cell phone, where context is lost when one has to zoom in to be able to read the small text.

Also, Id like to see a user-defined default such as "Unassigned Bookmarks" or something similar so that the user would know where to retrieve mistakenly unassigned bookmarks, or even ones for which an assignment might be decided upon later. Several years ago, I believe Other Bookmarks was such a location, which was okay because it was the known default, but the later decision to designate the Last Bookmark location is almost beyond belief. For heavy bookmark use, as I am, by the time I realize an omission or error, how in the world can I remember my last choice. Yikes!

Firefox's bookmarking facility is one of the outstanding features of the browser and it's a shame that recent changes, instead of better accessibility, have diminished its usefulness. 

[dantheclamman]

I also would find this a useful application of machine learning. Good old Pocket Premium used to do auto-tagging for my bookmarks, before Mozilla killed it. So they already own some tech regarding auto-tagging of bookmarks that could be applied to Firefox bookmarks.

Similarly, they already have the ability to read a page on desktop, if you click the Reader view. But that feature has not been developed extensively and there is a lot of room for improvement, and it hasn't been brought to mobile, where it would honestly have more use. Would be great to pull up a webpage and have it read to me as I go to work. There are apps that can do this (for example, I already convert long articles I like into epubs that I have read to me with an app), but would be cooler if it was built into my preferred browser itself.

Both of these would be more practical applications for a local AI, instead of the current hyperfixation on chatbots/LLMs, where I really don't see the value of integration into the browser. I think they would also be a differentiator for Mozilla from other browsers that are frantically chasing the chatbot/"agentic" browser angle that I don't think most Firefox users really are interested in.

[GrillSeeker]

AI Manager for Bookmarks

I have thousands of bookmarks accumulated over years, and they're a complete mess. I'd love an AI-powered bookmark manager that can intelligently handle them based on my instructions.

• Automatically visit links to detect and remove dead/broken ones.
• Analyze content and organize bookmarks into custom folders (e.g., create a new folder called "Long-Running Comics" and move all links from comic sites with 100+ chapters).
• Group related bookmarks thematically (e.g., collect all YouTube gardening videos into a dedicated "Gardening Videos" folder).
• Handle migrations between sites (e.g., for shopping links, search for the exact same product on a different site, update the bookmark to the new URL, and flag/move any that aren't available into a "Missing Products" subfolder).
• And much more—essentially, an intelligent agent that can take natural-language commands to clean, sort, and transform my entire bookmark library.

[Jon]

(Note: similar ideas have been merged into this thread)