favoritesfile

Tool

Dead link checker

Bookmarks rot quietly. Drop your file in, and this checks every domain in it to find the ones that no longer answer — then hands you a cleaned file to re-import.

Before you start: this is the one tool here that uses the network. Your bookmarks still aren't uploaded anywhere — instead, your browser quietly requests the home page of each domain in your file to see whether anything answers. Those sites will see a hit from your IP address. No cookies are sent with the requests.

The cleaned file contains everything except the bookmarks on domains marked no answer. Folders are preserved, so you can re-import it straight into any browser.

Domains that didn't answer

Untick anything you want to keep before downloading.

RemoveDomainBookmarksReason

Couldn't be checked

These are never removed from the cleaned file — they need a human look.

DomainBookmarksWhy

What this can and can't see

Worth being straight about, because most "dead link checkers" aren't.

A web page can send a request to another site, but for security reasons the browser refuses to show that page the response — including the status code. So this tool can reliably tell you "nothing answered at that domain": the DNS record is gone, the server refuses connections, or it times out. That's the overwhelming majority of bookmark rot, and it's the safest category to bulk-delete.

What it can't see is a domain that's alive but where your specific page is gone — a 404, a paywall, or one of those "this article has moved" landing pages. Those come back as answered. Checking them properly needs a server making the request, which would mean uploading your bookmarks. That's the trade this site doesn't make.

Sources of false alarms

  • Ad blockers and privacy extensions. If an extension blocks the request, it looks identical to a dead domain. If a domain you know is fine shows up as dead, that's usually why.
  • Sites that only work over http://. A secure page can't make insecure requests, so these are listed as unchecked rather than dead.
  • Intranet and localhost bookmarks. Anything not reachable from where you're sitting right now reads as dead.
  • Rate limiting. Checking a few thousand domains quickly can get you throttled by your network. Slower is more accurate.

So: treat the dead list as a strong shortlist, skim it before you download, and keep your original export. That's also why the tool checks one request per domain rather than per bookmark — forty bookmarks on the same site is one request, not forty.