Google Chrome’s market share is massive compared to other web browsers. For comparison, in April 2019, Chrome holds over 60% of the web browser market share, followed by Apple’s Safari with 12,7%. Chrome is fast, reliable, and Google is doing a great job of improving its functionalities and adding new features.

They’ve recently enhanced the web search bar drastically, and users can now do things like convert currencies, perform complex calculations, and see search result answers as they type. The goal here is clear—improve the user experience and save time. And those tiny moments matter a great deal, which is why most of us buy new smartphones every year. It’s all about speed.

However, the most important thing for all of us who use Chrome daily is productivity. Today, I will focus on Chrome’s bookmarks bar and share some ideas on how we can improve it.

If you are like many of us, you probably bookmark your favorite websites, or you’re using the shortcuts when a new tab is opened. I much prefer bookmarks, in fact, I have hundreds of them stacked in Chrome, and they are not well organized.

The browser offers the ability to add folders in your bookmarks tab, but that’s neither ideal nor easy on the eye. Good luck stacking fifty bookmarks in a folder that shows all of them as drop-down options. And let’s be honest, we haven’t seen an improvement in this aspect of the web browser in many years. I think it’s time for one.

So, how people use bookmarks? Those of us who have too many to be displayed on a single row have to prioritize on put the most important first, remove titles, and hope for the best. When we need a bookmark that’s way past the visible ones, we struggle to find it quickly. There are a few reasons why that’s the case.

First, the icons that we see every time we use the browser are much easier to remember since we see them regularly. Secondly, those that can only be shown if we click on the drop-down menu on the far right are only seen for a few seconds each time. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to remember them.

If you didn’t get excited before, well, now’s the time because I have two solutions for you, Google Chrome developers. Why two? So, you can begin A/B testing as soon as possible, silly. The first one is to create bookmark categories that can replace the whole bookmarks bar when selected.

I’ve limited my concept to five categories because I believe more would cause more harm than good and may slow us down. The five types are General, Social Media, Work, Learning, and Casual or Fun. Users can quickly swap between each one and access the websites they have saved.

This would be an excellent solution for freelancers, and other professionals who use the same chrome profile for work, but also in their free time. If you can toggle between categories, you will rarely have to search for old bookmarks, and you will easily recall where each one is positioned.

The second solution involves stacking bookmarks in smart folders. Here, we can have more than five categories, and each folder will have a unique icon. For my concept, I’ve used Google as an example of how this works. Folders are indistinguishable from regular bookmarks, except for a small blue line underneath them.

When selected, the folder expands to the side, showing the user every bookmark inside. Here, we have all the existing functionalities from before, such as rename, edit, delete, etc. The reduce the clutter, we have to limit the number of bookmarks saved in a folder, depending on if they have titles, or not.

Here, more user testing would be necessary to find out which option the majority of users prefer, and quickly will they adapt to the new design.

Conclusion
Bookmarks are essential productivity boosters we use regularly. They can be helpful, but also a pain in the ass if we lose control (as I have). This project tries to brainstorm solutions and explore ideas on how they can be improved, and I’d love to see more variations in the future. Chrome is a web browser with massive popularity and is always getting better and faster. Maybe when the time is right, we’ll see some changes done in the bookmarks department.