How to find dead links in your bookmarks
Updated
To find dead links in your bookmarks, export them to a bookmarks.html file and load it into the free Bookmark Dead Link Checker. It tests, from your own browser, whether each bookmarked site still answers, lists the ones that don't, links to archived copies, and gives you a clean file without them. It reliably catches sites that are gone, but it can't see "404 Not Found" pages on sites that are still up.
How common are dead bookmarks?
Common enough that old bookmark folders are full of them. In a May 2024 study, Pew Research Center found that 38% of web pages that existed in 2013 were no longer accessible a decade later, and that 23% of news pages contained at least one broken link (Pew Research Center). For why it happens, see why articles disappear from the web.
What "dead" means
A bookmark can stop working in several ways, and they're not equally easy to detect:
| What happened | What you see | Found by the free checker? |
|---|---|---|
| The domain expired or the server is gone | The browser can't reach the site | ✓ Not Responding |
| The site is slow or overloaded | The page takes forever to load | Partly, as Timed Out |
| The page was deleted | "404 Not Found" on a working site | ✗ Shows as Responding |
| The page moved without a redirect | The site's home page or an error page | ✗ Shows as Responding |
| The domain was sold | A parked page or a different site | ✗ Shows as Responding |
What a browser-based checker can and can't detect
The checker runs in your browser, not on a server. That keeps your bookmarks private, but browsers set some limits:
- No 404 detection. Browsers don't let one website read another site's responses. The checker can tell whether a site answered, not what it said, so a missing page on a working site counts as responding.
- Ad blockers and privacy extensions can get in the way. If one blocks a domain, that site can look like it's not responding. Pause the blocker for the page, or open surprising results yourself.
- Old
http://links. A secure page can't make insecure requests, so the checker tries thehttps://version instead. If that doesn't answer, the link is marked Can't Check, not dead. - Local addresses are skipped. Links to your router, your own computer or a home server are marked Local Address.
- 10 seconds per link. A site that doesn't answer in time is marked Timed Out. It may just be slow.
How to check your bookmarks with the free tool
- Export your bookmarks to a bookmarks.html file: Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, Brave or Opera.
- Open the Bookmark Dead Link Checker and drag in the file, or click Choose a Bookmarks File. Checking starts straight away, eight links at a time, with a progress bar. Click Stop to pause and Resume to carry on.
- Review the results by status:
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| Not Responding | The site couldn't be reached at all | The safest to remove |
| Timed Out | No answer within 10 seconds | Check a few by hand first |
| Can't Check | An http:// link whose site doesn't answer over https:// |
Open it yourself |
| Local Address | A link to your own computer or network | Skipped |
| Responding | The site answered | The page itself may still be gone |
- Download the clean file. Click Download Without Dead Links to get a copy of your bookmarks without the Not Responding links. Your folders stay as they were, except any left empty. Tick Also remove links that timed out to drop those too.
Your file is read in your browser and never uploaded. Each check is a request from your browser to that site, without cookies, much like opening the link yourself.
Look for an archived copy before you delete
A dead link isn't always a lost page. Next to each link that didn't respond, click Archived Copies. It opens the Wayback Machine, the Internet Archive's record of the web, on a list of every saved capture of that address.
Two caveats from the Internet Archive's help pages: not every page was captured, and some sites are excluded, for example because they were password-protected or blocked crawlers. Capture dates also matter. The newest copy might be a parked domain, so try an older one.
If you find the page, save what you need from the archived copy now.
Put the clean file back into your browser
Importing a bookmarks file adds to your current bookmarks. It doesn't replace them. To end up with only the clean set, keep your original export as a backup, delete your old bookmarks, then import:
- Chrome: More (⋮) > Bookmarks and lists > Import bookmarks and settings > Choose file (Chrome Help).
- Firefox: Library > Import and Backup > Import Bookmarks from HTML… (Mozilla Support).
The duplicate bookmarks guide walks through the delete-then-import order in more detail.
Stop losing articles to dead links
A bookmark is only an address. When the page goes, the bookmark goes with it. The fix is to keep a copy of the text for the things you mean to read or come back to.
When you save a page with Reading Rewind, the article text is stored with your save, so you can still read it after the original disappears. Only the text is kept, not images, and Reading Rewind can only copy pages that are still online, so save them while they work. Bookmarks you sync or import can keep a copy too: open one in Reading Rewind while its page is online and it tries once to store the text. The Chrome extension saves the current page in one click, and the Firefox version is in beta. Read more in how to save a web page's text before it disappears.
FAQ
Why does a link show "Responding" when the page is gone?
Because the checker can only tell that the site answered. A browser can't read another site's reply, so it can't see that the reply was a "404 Not Found" page. Sites that are gone entirely, such as expired domains, are caught reliably.
Why do some working sites show as not responding?
An ad blocker or privacy extension may have blocked the request, or the site was briefly down. Open any surprising result yourself before removing it.
Is my bookmarks file uploaded?
No. The file is read in your browser, and nothing from it is sent to our server.
How long does a check take?
It depends on the size of your file and how many sites are slow. The checker tests eight links at a time and gives up on each after 10 seconds. You can stop and resume whenever you like.
Can the checker fix a dead link?
No. It finds dead links and points you to archived copies. If a page has moved, search for its title to find the new address and bookmark that instead.