Hover Bookmarks Bar

Why you'll like it

• More room for the page

  The bar takes no space until you want it, so every page gets the full height of the window.

• Nothing to sync

  It shows your browser's own bookmarks bar. Changes made in either place show up in the other, in every open tab.

• Feels native

  It matches each page's colour and ignores page zoom, so it looks like part of the browser.

• Private and light

  No data collection and no network requests. Nothing is added to a page until you first hover.

What it does

1. There when you reach for it

   Rest the mouse at the very top of a page for a moment, or keep moving it up past the top edge, and the bar slides down over the page. Move away and it hides again. It doesn't hide while a menu, dialog or drag is open.

   It never appears in fullscreen, so videos and presentations stay clean.

   

2. Ready the moment you install it

   Installing opens a short welcome page where the bar already works, so you can try it straight away. It also adds itself to the tabs you already had open, so there's nothing to reload.

   The toolbar button has a small menu: How to use, Choose folder… (for Vivaldi) and Help & support.

   

3. Folders, nested folders and quick multi-open

   Click a folder to open it, hover other folders to switch, and nested folders open on hover. A » menu catches bookmarks that don't fit across the width.

   Middle-click or Ctrl+click opens a bookmark in a background tab and keeps the folder open, so you can open several in a row.

   

4. Matches the page you're on

   The bar takes on the colour of the top edge of the page, light or dark. Dia tints its toolbar from those same pixels, so your toolbar keeps its colour while the bar is showing.

   Page zoom doesn't affect it either. The bar stays the same size as the rest of the browser's interface.

   

5. Edit right from the bar

   Bookmark the current page with + (or edit it with ★). Right-click to open in a new tab or window, edit, rename, delete, open all or create a folder.

   Drag to reorder, drop into folders, or drag a link from the page up to the top edge to bookmark it.

   

Getting started

1. 1

   Install the extension

   Add it from the Chrome Web Store. Chrome, Edge, Brave, Vivaldi and Dia all install from there. To run it from source instead, download it from GitHub and load it unpacked.

2. 2

   Try it on any website

   A welcome page opens to try it on, and tabs you already had open work right away. The Web Store and New Tab pages are off-limits to every extension.

3. 3

   Hide your browser's own bookmarks bar

   Turn it off in your browser's settings (Ctrl+Shift+B in most Chromium browsers) so the hover bar is the only one on screen.

4. 4

   Rest the mouse at the top of a page

   The bar slides down over the page. Move away and it tucks itself back up.

Full setup instructions are in the README on GitHub (opens in new tab).

Troubleshooting

• The bar doesn't appear.

  Browsers block every extension on their own pages, so the bar can't appear on the New Tab page, settings pages, the Chrome Web Store, or some built-in PDF views. Anywhere else, rest the mouse at the very top edge of the page for a moment, or keep moving it up past the edge. Still nothing? Reload the tab.

• The bar or my browser's toolbar turns a different color.

  The bar copies the color at the top edge of the page so browsers like Dia keep their toolbar tint. That needs the extension's site access. If you loaded the extension from a folder and later updated it, remove it and add it again so the browser grants the new permission.

• Vivaldi shows the wrong bookmarks.

  Vivaldi doesn't tell extensions which folder its bookmark bar uses. Click the extension's toolbar button, choose Choose folder…, and pick the folder your Vivaldi bookmark bar shows. Open tabs switch right away.

• Where are my bookmarks stored?

  In your browser, exactly where they already were. The bar shows your browser's own bookmarks bar, so anything you change in one place shows up in the other. There's nothing to sync or export.

• Will it slow pages down?

  No. Nothing is added to a page until you first hover at the top, the script starts after the page has finished loading, and your bookmarks are only read when the bar opens.

Why I built it

I switched to Dia and missed Zen's auto-hiding bookmarks toolbar. I didn't want to give up the screen space or my bookmarks bar, so I built the in-between.

The hard part was making it disappear in every sense. It doesn't slow down page loads, it matches the page colour so the browser's own tint doesn't flicker, and it uses the bookmarks you already have.