Ask HN: Where do you store bookmarks? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Where do you store bookmarks?

50 pointstosh76 comments

I've started to post URLs I find interesting to Twitter and Facebook but both platforms are terrible for finding stuff again.

What do you use? What's the del.icio.us of 2018?

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+1 for pinboard.in

I have been using it for years and all my bookmarks are private. I love that it is very minimal, with exactly the features I need, and doesn't tie me to a browser. It has an API, plenty of apps and browser plugins, and I've always found Matiej to be responsive whenever I've had a problem.

He also has a great twitter account, where he spends a lot of time being snarky about tech companies [1].

[1]: https://twitter.com/pinboard

About a year ago I copied everything into Evernote. I had a bunch of disparate bookmarks across different desktop/mobile browsers and in places like medium/feedly. I created notebooks for different topics (in my case, "Data Science", "Frontend", "Design / Product", "Personal Efficiency", etc.). Then I use Evernote's chrome plugin to clip pages (I usually clip the whole thing so Evernote can do full text search over it). I then use tags for sub-sections of each topic. It's worked pretty well for me and I'm able to hold onto things even if the original source goes away.

I have a huge collection on Pinboard https://pinboard.in/. It's a very simple browser-accessible site that charges $11 per year for what seems like an unlimited number of bookmarks. The item properties are URL, title, description and tag(s). And it displays how many other users have added the same link. I consider this tool indispensable.

https://pinboard.in

Been a Pinboard user for several years. Simple and flexible. You can use tags to organize everything or fill in the bookmarks description field and use search. Have over 4,000 URLs saved with no issues. Easy to backup with a one line script.

  curl "https://api.pinboard.in/v1/posts/all?auth_token={$pinboard_api_key}&format=json" -o $pinboard_backup_dir

Pinboard also has some good Twitter integrations that might speed up your Bookmarking process https://pinboard.in/faq/#twitter_archive_extent

For sites that I visit often, I add them to my browser bookmarks in Chrome. Mainly for the autocomplete when I start typing the name of the site. Things to read get queued in the browser bookmark bar where they are visible, and I fight a losing battle with this getting too full.

For links to reference material and reading I have a collection of private OneNote notebooks with links and notes and bits of code. These notebooks are sync'd in a onedrive folder so I can access then in Office on my primary machine, or via the onenote webapp at work. It may not be fashionable but I like OneNote.

I used to use delicio.us back in the day, but never found its social aspect that useful. The nearest I now have to a public list of links is my HN favourites.

I'm curious as to the reason for storing bookmarks. It was a feature long ago, before search engines became so powerful. So what exactly is the use case now?

This guy on the Pinboard google group reached TEN THOUSAND bookmarks. For what reason exactly? https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/pinboard-dev/JKSUpO6...

Here's another user with A HUNDRED THOUSAND.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/pinboard-dev/JKSUpO67cuA/7Hd...

Ooh, that looks useful, thanks! (I’m approaching the 100k bookmark barrier, and I’m well-behind in tag maintenance over the last couple of years. Thank goodness for full-page search of my archives!)

- Lynne

That sounds like a manual search engine to me?

I tried many times to manage bookmarks in various forms, and it just turns into a giant list that you never revisit. Cathartic to just delete them all.

It sounds like a utility for people who hoard things in general.

Thoughts?

Easy, there are are people who sort everything into a system that often no one besides themselves see through and people who use search. I'm absolutely #1 - I've been filing my emails into a set of folders and I usually find everything I need by just looking through one folder (because sometimes you don't know the keyword or the person, just a vague feeling of "I'll notice when I see it"). In my last job we used GMail and the labels just didn't cut it (partly my bad because I didn't set up this elaborate folder structure) and I hated it.

I use falcon extension on Chrome. It indexes all the sites you visit so you can find the same site again with a search instead of a bookmark.

it lets me cite myself easily. "I read somewhere that X" is much less useful than "on such and such a date, person X wrote this oped in Y that asserted Z and i thought that was interesting..."

That sounds like a ton of administrative work. Imagine 100,000 bookmarks!

search is fast when you have many tags (and tag suggestions on new bookmarks) and full-text search of your cache.

Normally I can remember a phrase to search on, and that's fast.

Yeah, my brain tends to categorize things a little differently than Google does, so being able to tag something in Pinboard makes it much easier for me to find it later.

https://pinboard.in/

Definitely. Reasonably priced, I'm the customer, and it works with Android and Firefox, which are my everyday tools.

Had an account for a while, just now really starting using it. How do you use it with Android and Firefox? The official plugin says it doesn't work with Firefox Quantum.

I use https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/pinboard-pin/ on Firefox and https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pindroid&h... on Android.

I've been using this one https://github.com/lostsnow/pinboard-firefox

There's a quantum port: https://github.com/gapop/pinboard-webextension

Someone else just suggested this too, thank you. I try to just go with official plugins, don't want to invest time looking into some random person's plugin. But this one looks legit, and recommended.

An org file on my hard drive. It's plain text so... universally supported everywhere, woo!

Also universally supported across time.

People have no sense that they might want to look at something in 10-20 years in that web service that was so handy at the time...

I used to bookmark things, then realized I never went back to look at them.

If I find something especially interesting and important, I email a link to myself.

Most of the time if I want to find something again it's easier to just google it again than to dig through bookmarks.

Same. My bookmarks are a form of write-only memory.

I’ve been slowly realizing this, too. I’m finding it more effective to categorize ideas based on certain topics, and then have a Google Doc where I store links, with a brief paragraph accompanying each link on my key takeaways from the link. E.g. I’ve got an “Investing Notes” doc, a “Psychology Notes” doc, etc.

Kozmos: https://getkozmos.com

It simplifies adding and organizing bookmarks into a heart button, also uses modern & open source libraries (https://github.com/kozmos/likedb) so you can build your own clients & servers.

ps. I built Kozmos as one of the first users of both delicious and pinboard, feedback is welcome.

I have had a big issue with storing bookmarks and found Safari's way of managing them too limiting.

I decided to off load my public bookmarks to the web and let other people manage my bookmark collection instead. I built Learn Anything (https://learn-anything.xyz) to store my 'learning' bookmarks. And I manage many curated GitHub lists to store everything else (https://github.com/learn-anything/curated-lists).

I also have a wiki that stores both bookmarks and my notes, open source. This way anyone can extend both the bookmarks and notes if they wish. (https://wiki.nikitavoloboev.xyz)

I have then built my own tool in Go to query any of these public bookmarks. (https://github.com/nikitavoloboev/alfred-learn-anything)

Not using anything other than my browser's bookmarking system (https://imgur.com/a/BsaC6ZA) I think the biggest way to maintain it is to keep a firm control on categories and subcategories - very similar to setting up folders on a file system or labels in my email. As things become less relevant, I archive them into another subfolder for things I never need to return to again.

Overall, I've never been a fan of the other types of bookmarking tools; I like the ol' fashion because its barebones and reduces the number of accounts I need - however, if you are looking to add something like tags to URLs I would suggest something else. Maybe a private subreddit?

EDIT: Fixed Link

Fixed link: https://imgur.com/a/BsaC6ZA

Thanks for catching that!

We're still in beta, but you should check out Workona if you're looking for a work-focused solution:

https://workona.com

Think of it as a way to save links organized in "workspaces" for a specific project or workflow rather than a traditional bookmark manager.

For example, if you were writing a blog post, you could create a workspace for the Google Doc, Wordpress page, Hemingway Editor, and all the research you might want to include in the post.

You can then shut the workspace and pick up right where you left off with everything you need to work on the blog post later. This way you don’t clutter up your bookmarks with links that will be irrelevant once you're done working on the project.

Evernote for things that I may need to come back to later in the future or remember (documentation, guides, workarounds, lists, etc), Pocket for articles that I'd like to read sometime but that I never actually read.

Chrome Tabs Outliner extension. Brilliant unification of tabs management and bookmarks, with local storage and cloud backup if desired. I think it costs something like $15 for the full version, which is what you want.

Firefox Sync + Firefox Bookmarks + Firefox Addons for managing native bookmarks + https://github.com/WebMemex/webmemex-extension for indexing + custom code to generate static web pages with pure JS search with content out of bookmarks + I send interesting links to my friends if these could be interesting to them via email.

Do not use proprietary closed source solutions.

UPDATE: For something more importatng I use gitlab/gitlabe pages(my works usually) or syncthing (copies)

another vote for pinboard.in. Some features that make it well worth the full cost:

- Cached snapshots

- search bookmarks by actual boolean operations on tags, which is something hardly anyone does for reasons I've never understood.

- Fast, simple website. Everything that was good about 1999.

- Browser integrations for every browser worth mentioning

- OS integration for quick search outside of a browser

- mobile apps aplenty (i use Pinner on iOS)

- fully private bookmarks, if you want (which I do)

- nice API (I have some silly python scripts that give me tag statistics and clean things up; they took about 20 minutes to write)

- it's a one-man show, and he answers emails!

- tarball-of-all-your-data on demand.

How do you integrate with Firefox? Their plugin says it doesn't work with Firefox Quantum. (Or is that one not worth mentioning? ;)

I've been a devoted FF guy for 15 years, so I sure think it counts!

There's a quantum port: https://github.com/gapop/pinboard-webextension (also available by looking through firefox plugins, but i'm linking to the source for clarity)

Thank you. I try to go with official plugins, because who knows about all those similar named plugins made by random people. But this one looks legit.

> - Browser integrations for every browser worth mentioning

I'm missing the ability to sync with a browser's built-in bookmarks.

that's probably true, but I can't say for sure: I purged all of my local browser bookmarks years ago.

Pinboard is ground truth for me for specific links.

Feedly has become my repository of bookmarks-of-sites-i-like-to-read-in-general.

Why can't it be ground truth and sync to browsers' bookmarks? - I refuse to use anything that is not integrated with the browser bookmarks. All these numerous web "bookmarks" are just silly.

The above mentioned floccus/nextcloud looked promising but then they mentioned they can't sync different browsers from the same root. Somehow Xmarks doesn't have that problem. I am still looking for comparable replacement. Bookmarks are a way for immediate direct access to things I don't remember than a search tool for me. For search I can just google.

For those interested I found https://github.com/xBrowserSync to be the most promising. The only thing it doesn't have firefox extension yet.

I use Nextcloud Bookmarks [1] and Floccus [2] to sync the bookmark toolbar on Firefox/Chrome. I like to host my own, I don't need to sign into a 3rd party, and it's more cross-platform than browser sync.

[1]: https://github.com/nextcloud/bookmarks

[2]: https://github.com/marcelklehr/floccus

on macOS i just drag link to Finder. Or drag "+" in the left of address in Safari. In chrome drag https lock icon.

It is .webloc format.

I sort it, move folders/subfolders. You can easily preview it with space button in Finder.

The whole folder is repo stored on github. Also there are many markdown files, screenshots, interesting files.

I use symlinks (softlinks) which points to large binary files outside repo.

Often i want to put bookmark in markdown file. For this i use this bookmarklet:

javascript:var%20text='-%20%5B'+document.title+'%5D('+location.href+')';window.prompt(%22Copy%20to%20clipboard:%20Ctrl+C,%20Enter%22,text);void(0);

it is 5th bookmark in my Safari's favorites. I just hit ⌘⌥5 then ⌘C - and then paste it in markdown.

--------------------------------

If you're interested in this system there are PRO-TIPS:

* if you drag "+" in safari or "https-lock" in chrome - the .webloc is binary.

  - name of .webloc is page <title></title>

* if you drag link on page - then .webloc is plain text. And name is na

  - name of .webloc is what inside <a></a> html - tag

* there'is plain text .url format, which you can also open in both macOS and windows. But macOS's Quick Look is not works. Thats the reason why I decided to keep using bad-for-git binary .webloc

* .webloc is actually plist which is actually xml. You can easily parse binary plists with python's plist module

TiddlyWiki + SyncThing! I'm a heavy emacs user and used org-mode for a long time, but I'm finding that TiddlyWiki already lives in the browser, so it works well in places that Emacs has a harder time (tablets, phones, Chromebooks, whatever).

TiddlyWiki is quite underrated, I think. https://tiddlywiki.com/

Used to just use a plain text file, but that's become untenable.

Going to really start using pinboard.in

Have been bookmarking in Firefox, which is great for syncing between devices. But I got so many even that's seeming slow and hard to search through (but to be fair maybe I'll have the same problems with pinboard once I get to that many.)

Over 20k bookmarks on pinboard.in half of which were migrated over from the original delicious

Started with the $11 forever plan but then actually started paying for archive option on pinboard just in case.

Link rot is a bit of problem I think about 30% are dead.

I trust pinboard more than pretty much any VC backed company.

Only problem is the bus factor of 1.

> Link rot is a bit of problem I think about 30% are dead.

It would be nice to have a Firefox addon that would automatically submit your bookmark links for archival at major link archival services..

edit: Looks like at least one such addon exist: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/archiveror/

Honest question, not meant to be rude, but what value do you get from having created 20k bookmarks?

Probably 99% of bookmarks I am not ever going to see again, but finding that 1% is such a lifesaver.

As in I am doing a research on some topic and I already have a whole bunch of links nicely tagged and ready to go.

The problem is that you do not know which 1% are going to be useful again.

If you mean social bookmarking, I don't do that. If I find something interesting I share it on HN (happens really rarely) or on the chat of the "newsroom" for our podcast.

If it's stuff that I need to bookmark for further personal use, I have an owncloud (yes, I know) instance with the Bookmarks app installed.

> yes, I know

I don't. Would you clue me in?

Slightly debated topic, but most people who used to use it have gone to Nextcloud (a fork) since it has more frequent updates and a few new features.

For things that really interest me, I print out the sites as a PDF and store them locally. That bookmark can't rot, it's (moderately) searchable, and you can reference it offline.

It's an OK solution at best, but it's the best for references I really want to keep that I've found.

I have used pinboard in the past. However, right now, I feel that Shaarli is one of the best self-hosting options for bookmarks.

https://github.com/shaarli/Shaarli

https://raindrop.io/

Diigo is working fine for me. They try to do more (annotations eg) but I don't use it.

I switched from pinboard to diigo around 2 years ago. I love the "Annotate Page" functionality. I use it on all my bookmarks to quickly save the parts that I found useful or interesting. It is particularly useful when bookmarking HN/Reddit discussions, newsletters / link aggregations like High Scalability Newsletter. The hightlights are available when I open the page later so I know what I liked. Furthermore, the highlights show up when browsing the bookmarks on diigo, which makes it really great for research.

I'm a great diigo fan. I actually didn't need their improvements, and I'd still be on delicious if it still were a thing.

Toby [1] - the only actual bookmarks I have are for the bookmarks toolbar quick links. Anything that I need to save for later use goes in Toby.

[1] https://www.gettoby.com/

I'd actually be interested in hearing about this too. I stopped storing them in my browser now.

I figure some kind of org-mode solution will be my eventual tactic, but I'm interesting if anyone else on here has a more purpose built system.

I don't bookmark much. Just things I know I will want to refer to again but that wasn't particularly easy to Google, like certain so answers or blogs. I just use Firefox and tag them with the subject.

I just use Chrome everywhere (home, work, phone, tablet) and it syncs everything real well if you're signed in. I have a "to read" folder I dump stuff in to go through later.

Try https://www.pagedash.com

Works like an archiver for web pages, saves everything! Yes includes bookmarking

Built by a friend!

I just dump everything in Instapaper.

https://www.are.na/

hacked this https://github.com/grafoo/webdmp together some time ago. nothing fancy but works for me and i can host it on my own server.

https://www.diigo.com

OneDrive, text files. I can access it on my phone too if I need to.

Firefox. Bookmarks are synced across multiple platforms.

Same here. I also use tags a lot in my bookmarks.

I have tried Pocket and Google Keep before, but Firefox Sync is an order of magnitude more fluid to me.

And you can find them when you need'em the most, when actually typing a URL in the address bar. I also use this.

Firefox bookmarks, under "Other Bookmarks".

I use Things 3 to store bookmarks.

I use xmarks. It is free and simple.

http://www.xmarks.com

>LogMeIn is retiring Xmarks from its line of products as of May 1, 2018. After this date, you will no longer have access to Xmarks.

Oh shoot! Thank you.

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