The pipe trick for bookmark separators, and an easier way

Long before there were tools for this, people split up their bookmarks bar with a hack: the pipe trick. You make a bookmark, clear its name, and type a single pipe character so it shows up as a thin divider between groups of links. It works, up to a point. It is also the kind of fiddly workaround that a tool like Diviide exists to replace.

What is the pipe trick?

A bookmark separator is just a bookmark that reads as a divider rather than a link. The pipe trick fakes one by naming a bookmark with a single | character. Some people use a couple of spaces, a dash, or even an emoji instead. On the bar it looks like a faint vertical line, so the eye treats it as the start of a new group.

How people did it

1. Add a bookmark to the bar, of any page. You need a real address behind it.
2. Edit it by right clicking and choosing Edit.
3. Clear the name and type a single |, or append one to the end of the name, then save.
4. Drag it into place between two groups of bookmarks.
5. Repeat for every divider you want, one bookmark at a time.

Why people used it

It is free and built into every browser, and back when there was nothing better, it was the only way to break up a wall of tiny icons. If all you want is a faint line and you only need one or two, it does the job.

Where the pipe trick falls short

• No options. You get one shape, a thin line, in whatever gray your browser uses. No colors, no icons, no way to tell one divider from another.
• It is slow. Every divider is add, edit, rename, save, drag, by hand. Doing a whole bar this way is a chore.
• Hard to reorganize. When you want to change the order or carve out a new section, every pipe looks the same, so adjusting one means editing its bookmark again rather than just dragging a separator where you want it.
• It is not clear. A pale pipe is easy to miss and looks cramped next to real favicons, so the bar still reads as a blur.
• A favicon comes along. The bookmark still points at a real page, so its favicon sits right next to your line, which is the clutter you were trying to get away from.
• It is inconsistent. How a bare pipe renders varies by browser and version, so it can look fine on one machine and odd on another.

An easier way

Diviide is not just less work than the pipe trick. It gives you more to work with, it is quicker, and the result is clearer than anything you can type by hand.

• More options. There is a real pipe character in any color, plus 182 separators in 16.7 million colors besides, so you can color code and tell your groups apart at a glance.
• Quicker. Pick a color and drag a separator onto the bar. No adding a bookmark, no editing the name, no repeating the steps.
• Clearer. You get a crisp icon in any color, not a faint line, and no gray globe, so the bar is genuinely easy to scan.

New to it? Start with how to use Diviide, or see how to add bookmark separators in your browser.