Browser Syncing

This tip is a fairly simple one. Almost all modern browsers have a sync function – that can save all of your browser settings, bookmarks, extensions and passwords to an online account. Most, if not all of these encrypt the data which provides a layer of security, protecting your data. While I have my preferences of whom I am willing to store information with, and who I won’t – in general you should be fine with any of the big names. Firefox, Brave, Chrome, Edge, Opera, Safari and Vivaldi all support syncing. This is useful in that you can create a work profile on your home computer that has all the same websites and passwords for you to sign in to with ease. It’s also nice to create a separate profile so that you can keep your work and personal life separate. We’ll cover a couple here, but you can find instructions for your browser simply by googling “Your browser syncing”.

Firefox: Currently one of my two preferred browsers due to their strong stance on privacy and security. Firefox encrypts all of your data that you sync with their servers; so that even Firefox employees can’t see any of your data.  To setup Syncing on Firefox:

• Click the icon of a person in the top right near the close to the red X.
• Click “Sign in to Firefox”
  • (You may want to create a separate account to keep work and personal things separate. Unfortunately firefox isn't as good at this as Chrome or Brave. See here for the profile manager [1] in firefox) Enter your email address.
  • If you don’t have an account – it will take you to account creation
  • If you do have an account it will prompt for your password
• Click the various items you want to sync (probably everything)
• Watch all of your data from your initial browser appear in the second browser you signed in to.

Chrome Syncing:

• Click the person in the upper right near the X and the 3 dots
• Click “turn on Sync”
  • You may want to create a separate account to keep work and personal things separate. You can switch between them by clicking that same person icon
• Sign in if you already have a google account  (like gmail – though you can also choose to use your own non-gmail address)
• Click the “Yes I’m in” on the turn on sync page that follows.
• Watch all of your data from your initial browser appear in the second browser you signed in to.

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