Mar 14, 2021 3 min read firefox

Move all open tabs and bookmarks from Apple Safari to Firefox

Recently I had some problems with the new Safari browser on macOS 11, and at the same time I am a more Open Source fan, so I decide to have a go back to the new version of Firefox that is not compatible with the Apple M1 architecture.

I have a lot of tabs open all the time, Safari in the newest version started (nearly immediately) to show a prompt message that the tab I have open now and active (videos, youtube or mu training videos from blender or udemy platform) are using a significant amount of memory. This would not be a problem if Safari would just let me know, instead it will automatically refresh the page...in the middle of a training video;/ yhhhhh If this would be happening from time to time, but at this point it's every 1-2 minutes on a tab with video material.

I have been searching for a solution, all the materials that I have checked out are suggesting that because I like to have a lot of tabs open Safari will not be happy about that as every tab (logically) take some memory of of the pool, so in sum my web browser is using a lot of memory. I agree with that, and I as a user am aware and will take the consequences for that as there are. I just do not like a program making a decision for me after informing me about the situation.

I decided to check if Firefox will be a better solution in this case. So how do I move all my opened tab from Safari to Firefox (140 tabs at this moment). Well, there are few options:

You can just copy every address from a tab one by one :D
You can save all tab in your bookmarks and move them at once to Firefox :)

Let's go then, and copy one by one...just kidding:

1. On Safari open the Bookmarks menu and select 'Add bookmarks for these 140 tabs...'

2. Next, select a location within your bookmarks where all the tabs should be saved, you can created a folder for them in bookmarks if you want, but just to say, all tabs will be save into a folder called 'Saved Tabs' automatically.

3. Open Firefox (if you have not downloaded it yet, please do so) and go to the menu section File and 'Import From Another Browser...'

4. Depending on how many browsers you have installed, Firefox will show you options to chose from. I have only Safari, click Continue.

5. Next step is choosing what do you want to import, just select all options.

6. You might be asked by Firefox to give access the the .plist file of Safari, you just need to click Continue and select the plist file to allow access, after that you will get the 'Import Completed' windows.