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 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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