Top Reasons why bookmarks sorting and/or syncing not appear to work as expected in Smarky, Synkmark or BookMacster

#1.  User did not quit Smarky or Synkmark, or in BookMacster did not at least close the .bmco document window, after configuration was completed.  (Quitting web browsers is not required*.)  Automatic syncing of bookmarks changes occurs only while the relevant .bmco document window is closed in BookMacster, or when BookMacster or Synkmark are quit.   (This is to prevent conflicts which could occur if changes were pulled in from browsers while you were editing bookmarks in BookMacster or Synkmark.)  Most users should leave BookMacster or Synkmark quit except when wanting to do major bookmarks housecleaning – once a week, month or whatever.

#2.  User did not switch Syncing to Ready before doing #1.  (When Syncing is Ready, the Syncing button in the toolbar of the .bmco document window shows a big yellow dot.)

#3.  User did not wait for the minutes required for changes to sync from one browser to another before checking the other browser.  (The number of minutes is shown in Preferences > Syncing > Minutes to wait….  Add another minute for the syncing work to be done.  Setting it faster will decrease the probability of conflict in case you make changes in one browser and then a few minutes later make a change in another browser..  But faster will, on average, use more resources if you make multiple changes in one browser within a few minutes.)

#4.  User made bookmark changes (new bookmarks, deleted bookmarks, updated bookmarks) in one synced web browser, then immediately activated a second web browser and made more changes, before waiting the minutes required for syncing to occur.  The changes made in the first web browser will probably be lost.

#5.  (Safari only, in macOS 10.14 or later) User did not give our app Full Disk Access.  This should cause frequent error dialogs to be displayed, but you should check it to be sure.

#6.  (Safari only) iCloud transactions have been left out of balance by other apps, or iCloud errors.  iCloud Safari bookmarks need to be rebuilt.  (This could maybe happen with Firefox Sync, Opera Sync, or Sign in to Chrome too, but we've never seen it.)

#7.  (Firefox, Vivaldi, Opera, Chrome only)  Browser extensions are not enabled.  Click in the menu: Manage Browser Extensions and Test them.

#8.  User has a Sync Loop.

#9.  User added another web browser and/or another Mac to the system and just switched on Syncing without first removing all bookmarks from browsers on the new Mac, or at least doing a File > Export from Synkmark or BookMacster to overwrite the old cruddy bookmarks.

#10.  In Synkmark's Preferences > Syncing, or in BookMacster's .bmco document window > tab Settings > Clients, user has switched off one or more of the Import or Export checkboxes.

#11.  (BookMacster only)  In the .bmco document window > tab Settings > Agents, user has switched to Advanced agents and configured them incorrectly for what they expect.  Almost everyone should be using Simple agents.

#12.  New items were properly synced but they were mapped into a different hard folder (the root, Favorites, Bookmarks Toolbar, Bookmarks Menu, Other Bookmarks, Reading List, etc.) because not all of these hard folders exist in all browsers, and user did not look in the correct destination.

#13.  Although there are no known issues with our syncing agent, because the following suggestion is fast and easy, you may want to launch BookMacster, Synkmark or Smarky and click in the application-name menu: Reboot Sync Agent.  If success is indicated, quit the app and see if syncing works now.  Just under Reboot Sync Agent is Show Syncing Status.  This will generate a report which may be useful for either you or our support team when diagnosing trouble.

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Note that quitting Safari is not required for syncing to occur, and quitting Firefox, Brave, Edge, Vivaldi, Opera, Chrome, Canary or Chromium is not required provided that you have installed the BookMacster Sync extension into them.  Quitting or launching a web browser while syncing is occurring may interrupt the operation, requiring that it be re-done a few minutes later.  So, for fastest results, do not try to launch or quit web browsers to trigger syncing.