Back when YouTube was designed, we didn't know there was a limit to the number of views a video could accrue until Psy’s hit single Gangnam Style shattered the billion-view barrier and forced Google to redesign its views counter. Now, people using the most popular web browser, Google Chrome, report a recently introduced hard limit, this time on the number of bookmarks that can sync across your devices.
If you have several thousand bookmarks in Chrome, don’t be surprised if the web pages you recently earmarked for reference on one device aren’t syncing with other devices using the same Google account. Reddit user MartyMacGyver bumped up against this cap after Google introduced a new Chrome feature on March 21 designed to “guard against users with way too many bookmarks in sync.” This change places an arbitrary limit on how many bookmarks you can access on multiple devices with one Google account.
Google hasn’t confirmed how many bookmarks will break sync for you, but a bug report for this situation reveals the cap is well into the thousands — 20,000 bookmarks for mobile devices and 100,000 for Chrome on desktop. Unfortunately, there’s no telling you’re affected until you catch new bookmarks not syncing, because Chrome doesn’t warn you even once. If you suspect it's happening, you can visit the following Chrome settings page:
chrome://sync-internals
If you have slammed into this new limit, you’ll see the following error message for Bookmarks under the Type Info section in the About tab when you visit the above page.
Error: ConnectIfReady@components/sync_bookmarks/bookmark_model_type_processor.cc:460,
datatype error was encountered: Local bookmarks count exceed limit.
In its relentless pursuit to make Chrome faster, it's likely that Google is now tinkering with bookmarks because syncing too many takes time, potentially freezing the UI and creating a sluggish user experience. We'll have to give Google the benefit of the doubt and assume it isn't planning to paywall bookmark sync.
Google’s limit for the maximum number of pages to sync may seem ample at first, however, the issue is affecting many people, especially power users. People who have used Chrome for many years may also sit atop a heap of bookmarks, unable to sync them across devices. Power users, doing what they do, have tried bypassing the limit by switching sync on and off again, but to no avail. Thankfully, a bug report has been created.
Potential solutions are a dime a dozen, but Google could create an opt-in Chrome flag unlocking sync beyond a certain limit. This way, most users subject to the bookmark sync cap would enjoy the snappy experience Google designed, while those who value bookmark sync above everything could flip a switch and be on their merry synced way. At the very least, Chrome could show users a warning if they reach the maximum number of bookmarks that can be synced. This would give them a chance to delete unnecessary bookmarks and free up space in the metadata file for the newer bookmarks. That said, it's anybody’s best guess what Google may do at this point.