Cleaning up: duplicates, untitled, old and collisions

Find the clutter, preview what a cleanup will do, and know the limits of Undo before you press delete.

What counts as clutter

Category	Definition	Good to know
Duplicate	Two or more bookmarks with the same normalised page address (see URL identity)	Every copy is flagged, including the one you would keep.
Untitled	The title is empty, or is untitled, new bookmark or (Untitled bookmark)	Rows show the placeholder (Untitled bookmark).
Old	Added 730 days (about two years) or more ago	Uses the date Chrome recorded. The threshold is fixed.
Title collision	The same title (ignoring case and surrounding spaces) is used for more than one different page address	Often fine. Useful for spotting vague titles such as Home.

Use the filter chips, the Clean panel, or the operators is:duplicate, is:untitled, age:old, is:collision to see them. The Stats panel also turns the counts into suggestions such as Merge duplicate groups or Fix muddy metadata.

Merging duplicates safely

Do not delete duplicates by hand. Use the preview, which lets you choose the survivor and shows what will happen.

Narrow the view. The preview acts on visible bookmarks. Clear unrelated filters or apply the Duplicates chip. The dialog states Visible bookmarks (current filters): N.
Open the preview. Choose Library tools → Duplicate preview. If there is nothing to merge you will see a message instead.
Choose a survivor for each group. Every group lists its copies with title, address, folder, date added and tags. A radio button marks the survivor. The default follows Settings → Merge strategy (Keep newest bookmark by default, or Keep oldest bookmark). You can override each group.
Check the numbers. The dialog shows Duplicate groups and Bookmarks to remove, and for each group the Merge tags result.
Merge. Choose Merge and remove duplicates. The preview is the confirmation, so there is no second prompt.

What the merge does

It re-checks everything first. If a bookmark was edited, moved or deleted since you opened the preview, the merge stops with Preview changed; reopen it before merging and changes nothing.
The union of all copies' tags is saved on the survivor before any copy is deleted. If that union would exceed 20 tags, the merge is refused up front.
The survivor keeps its own title, address, folder, ID and date.
The other copies are deleted with the normal delete flow below, including Undo.

Undo after a merge brings the deleted copies back, but the survivor keeps the extra tags it gained.

Deleting bookmarks

Select bookmarks and press Delete (the selection bar button, the detail panel button, the row menu, or Delete / Backspace with rows selected). A dialog asks Delete N bookmarks? with Delete and Keep them.

The result is a toast: Deleted: N. Failed: M. with an Undo button. The toast stays until you click it, replace it with another action, or press Esc.

What Undo restores

The bookmark's title and address.
Its folder, and its position among the surviving neighbours in that folder.
Its tags, attached to the new bookmark.

What Undo cannot restore

The original ID and the original "date added." Chrome assigns new ones. After Undo a bookmark may look new, and the Old filter will no longer count it as old.
Anything stored by Chrome that extensions cannot set.
A permanent safety net. The undo information lives in memory in the open dashboard. Reloading or closing the tab discards it. It is not a recycle bin.

Partial failures

A delete is not atomic. If some bookmarks cannot be removed (for example, one was already deleted elsewhere), the toast reports both numbers and Undo covers only the ones that were actually removed. Undo itself can partly fail; it then reports how many remain and lets you press Undo again to retry only those.

Be careful

For big cleanups, export a snapshot first (Library tools → Export snapshot). A snapshot is the only recovery that survives closing the tab. See Backup and restore.

Fixing untitled and vague titles

Filter by Untitled or Collisions, open the detail panel and use Edit to give each bookmark a meaningful title. Editing keeps ID, folder and tags.

Reviewing old bookmarks

Old does not mean dead. Combine the Old chip with a link-health scan (age:old health:bad) to find old bookmarks whose pages are also gone.

Repairing redirected links

After a link-health scan, bookmarks that redirect to a different final address can be updated in place. This has its own rules and no Undo; read Repairing redirects first.

A sensible cleanup routine

Export a snapshot.
Merge duplicates with the preview.
Run a link check on what remains, review health:bad , and delete only what you have confirmed is dead.
Give untitled bookmarks real titles.
Repair redirects you have checked.