How in the Tech

Condensing Chrome’s bookmarks toolbar to merely icons

By Adam Myers ⋅ May 25, 2010 ⋅ Tags: Google Chrome

I’ve been a loyal Firefox user before it was even called Firefox – the browser just works for me and through it’s extensive extensions it has a rather compelling case on why it should be your main browser. Like many enthusiasts, I’ve found myself using the Google browser Chrome more and more. This is not a comparison post however; each browser has it’s pros and cons and right now, they both have their legitimate right to  be installed on every computer.

One of the first things I do with a virgin Firefox profile is to turn off the bookmarks toolbar – a quick-launch of sorts for your most accessed sites. As a minimalist, I just don’t like the amount of vertical space it consumes and the convenience it provides isn’t high enough when I can access my bookmarks from the Bookmarks menubar at the top. Like Firefox, Chrome utilizes the same concept and while it too can be disabled, it severely hinders the usability of the bookmarks – at least in my traditional work flow. Chrome does not have a menubar like Firefox; instead the full bookmarks listing is accessed through a button on the bookmarks toolbar. Disable that toolbar, and access to your bookmarks is rather inconvenient – they are referenced then through the address bar and pulled up as you begin typing the address. Ugh!

The short of it, I’m using Google Chrome’s bookmark toolbar in it’s native configuration. If you use the toolbar as a means to quickly access a few select websites, you know it can fill up rather quickly with any more than a handful of shortcuts. Put too many sites on the toolbar and many of them will end up in a drop-down menu which greatly defeats the purpose of the entire system!

The solution is actually comically simple actually. Right-click on the bookmarklets in question and choose Edit.

In the Edit Bookmark dialog you will see the name field that typically mirrors the website’s name – and what appears on your toolbar.

Deleting the name will cause Chrome to just display the website icon with no text description. If your websites can be quickly identified by their favicon, then this is a pretty effective way to solve the screen real estate problem!