
Ask HN: How to handle bookmarks so you can find them again? - marmot777
This may be too pedestrian a topic for HN but I have so many bookmarks that when I had another one it disappears into the pile never to be seen again. I do use folders but now there are tons of folders, too, I&#x27;ve tried Trello, and I tried pocket briefly but it didn&#x27;t seem quite right though maybe I didn&#x27;t give it a chance.<p>My latest experiment is Google Bookmarks and I&#x27;m toying with just a simple either HTML page I add and categorize bookmarks on or a simple app to make managing them easier. Any suggestions on something to try?<p>To be perfectly honest it&#x27;s possible the problem is me and not taking an organized approach, not tools that are the problem. Maybe I&#x27;m waiting for the bookmarking solution to solve a problem with clutter.
======
tedmiston
I think that organizing bookmarks is actually a pretty important problem that
most people have, at least in Safari and Chrome. IIRC, Firefox on the other
hand has had tagged bookmarks for sometime.

I use Pinboard with searchable descriptions and tags to create a better
organizational system. There are third party clients for mobile as well.

For some bookmarks like places to visit, I've adopted a hierarchical tag
system within that.

~~~
marmot777
Unreal. Pinboard is cool. I put down the $11 and jumped in. I think they're
smart to price weirdly yet low. I did a double take at $11 and sort of
laughed. Anyway, initial impression is wow pinboard is pretty cool and
definitely not trying to be fancy. I like that.

~~~
skinnymuch
Good choice! Pinboard has been around for over 7 years, creator is on HN
(idlewords), and he has posted metrics like active users, data usage, costs,
and even revenue for the 7th year anniversary. Product is here to stay :).

~~~
marmot777
A slightly funny thing is I emailed a friend to mention this newly organized
approach but got Pinterest mixed up with pinboard and sent a link to that. I
don't even know if people still use Pinterest. I remember I had an account for
a little while and people pinned stuff to a wall but I didn't spend all that
much time on it as that's not my thing.

~~~
skinnymuch
Hah yeah that happens. When I've geeked out and wanted to search for people
talking about Pinboard before, going past initial search results ends up being
partially Pinterest stuff.

------
endisukaj
Shameless plug.

I have written a CLI-based bookmark manager. It's pretty simple to use, you
can add links, remove them, add titles for them, descriptions etc...
Everything is organized with tags so you can specify which tag you want to get
links from and it will show them to you. Oh and everything's saved in a plain
text file so you can backup that file, use version control and whatever you
want to do with it.

I will also add searching in the future but have not come around to do it
since I haven't had much time. If you or anyone wants to help it's on Github
and it's written in Go. Pull requests are welcome :)

[https://github.com/Endi1/drawer](https://github.com/Endi1/drawer)

~~~
tedmiston
This looks pretty cool. Have you considered adding support for Pinboard sync?

~~~
endisukaj
Thanks!

As for the Pinboard sync: not really. Since I made this mainly for myself and
for personal use and since I don't use Pinboard I never thought of adding it.
But it does seem interesting, maybe in the future.

------
marmot777
Okay, now I get why I still felt there was something missing. There's actually
two problems and I lumped them together. There's the bookmark problem. I want
to come back to HN. And there's the "save for later" problem this looks like a
cool article but there's no time now.

* So I think Pinboard does a great job at the bookmark problem but either I'm just not used to it yet or it's not quite got the "read for later" problem solved.

* It seems as though pocket might be stronger at addressing the "read for later" problem. But now that I know the missing piece is called "read for later" it's just a matter of inserting that component into my personal app ecosystem and being more alert for those solutions as pinboard seems to nail the bookmark problem.

HN and citizens thereof: you rule! Like my bookmarks, I forget all about HN
but always feel it's a good experience to visit here, maybe discuss a few
things, occasionally post a question or something.

------
acemarke
Pinboard. Totally worth it.

I use Pocket for short-term "I want to come back to this soon" bookmarking,
but I use Pinboard for long-term saving of stuff I might want to refer to
later, thanks to tagging and its page archival feature.

~~~
marmot777
And it's $11/year and they pinboard claims to respect privacy. They also say
it's simple. I'm liking this but it almost sounds too good to be true but for
$11 I can roll the dice. :-)

------
0x54MUR41
Currently, I am using Larder ([https://larder.io/](https://larder.io/)), which
is a bookmarking tool for developers. It supports categorizing and tagging
bookmarks. Categorizing is done by folders. You can make a folder that has
child. It will make you easier to organize bookmarks. Beside that, you can
search your bookmarked links by tag, title, and URL.

This tool also supports synchronizing your GitHub stars. So, you can track
updates from projects that you starred on GitHub. If you want to bookmark
something automatically, Larder extension is available for browsers, Android,
and API.

I have been using Evernote. I just clip a website or PDF that I want to read
later. But, I don't know why I can't use it properly. Like what you said, the
problem is me. I haven't used Pinboard before. It seems many people recommend
it a lot.

~~~
marmot777
Evernote is cool but for some reason I have this block against using it. I'll
occasionally remember I have it then quickly forget. It's weird.

This larder thing looks interesting but to avoid drowning in tools might have
to bookmark it for later and hopefully will stumble on it again. Trello can
also work for bookmarks if you're doing research on a defined topic I've found
but for general bookmarking i tried it does not scale well so it's perfect for
projects and perfect for saving some results of some searches focused on that
project.

------
remar
My next side project will hopefully address this problem. The issue I run into
is that I have multiple data sources for articles I want to read, but no
single feed that I can push those data sources into to later consume and mark
as processed/read.

My current strategy has just been to accumulate hundreds-thousands of tabs in
my browsers and basically rely on firefox's "save tabs from last session"
feature to keep history. Downsides are that these aren't synchronized across
all my browser instances. But this allows me to quickly scroll through the tab
set, pick a tab, consume it, and just close it to mark as complete.

I used to dump snapshots of my working tab set into a plaintext file so that I
could track history, back it up, and retrieve them later by other means, e.g.
ssh into my server from phone to retrieve a link (very high overhead). This
doesn't scale too well when you want to mark an item as completed as removing
a line of text in a file manually in a shell session from your phone isn't
exactly "fluid".

My plan is to build a service that will be a storage backend to store
feeds/queues of "things I need to do", whether it's articles I've been meaning
to read or just simple TODO notes like "do xyz tonight". There will be a
system to label/tag items under a specific category so that in the UI you're
not just bombarded with a list of thousands of TODOs.

Features I've been considering having:

* allow user to specify multiple cloud storage backends for the data to be replicated across * have relatively simple storage format, motivation being that I should be able to view/modify data through plaintext interface like editing a file with vim if I want to * create firefox plugin that will use this same system to synchronize tabs, this would mean that as a side effect I would have this information available on all my systems and backed up as well * web UI to access all generic queues, e.g. items I've manually created as well as the queues storing my tabs

Sometimes I wonder if there's a term associated with how obsessive I am about
not losing information...

~~~
tedmiston
I do pretty much the same thing as you for "working tabs" but I bookmark each
tab set as something like "[WIP] coffee shops to visit in manhattan" so Chrome
doesn't get bogged down with 100+ tabs and multiple "sessions".

I also wrote some AppleScript code to move open tab sessions back and forth
between Safari and Chrome [1]. You also might be interested in some of the
alternatives listed in the readme, like OneTab.

[1]: [https://github.com/tedmiston/tab-
transporter](https://github.com/tedmiston/tab-transporter)

------
marmot777
I wanted to come back to this thread to say I imported my bookmarks into
[https://pinboard.in/](https://pinboard.in/) and my bookmarks feel useable
again, though I deleted a bunch once I could see how much crap I had in there.

I also fired up Feedly account as that's helpful too and I'd sort of forgotten
about my account.

I'm thinking of testing out some more things as it seems like maybe there
should be one more piece of the puzzle. Maybe that'll be pocket though I don't
even remember what the interface is like or why I don't use it. Maybe no good
reason at all.

------
pasbesoin
Circa 2000. A commercial product named PowerMarks. Cross-browser. One click
bookmarking. Default indexing based on words pulled from title, some meta
tags, whatever -- that the user could augment/change on the fly. Terms listed
space-separated, making doing so very easy and quick.

Rapid, incremental pattern-matching search against the index. A list of
matches would shrink as you continued to type in your search term. Again,
space-separated, making this very quick to type.

Basically, if you remembered a few relevant things/terms about the page, you
were probably going to find it within a couple of seconds. With the automated,
default pretty-good indexing, you didn't have to spend time manually entering
tags/terms. You didn't have to think and then manually sort bookmarks into
folders.

PowerMarks "just worked".

Unfortunately, it was shareware, and it eventually went the way of a lot of
such products. Add to this the continued changes of browsers that made keeping
the cross-browser functionality and the application's independence (of itself,
a major plus, in my book) an increasing struggle.

Sigh. I still miss it.

------
joshu
I wrote delicious for this originally. Now I use Pinboard for "ambient"
bookmarks and Trello for project-oriented bookmarks.

~~~
jjmiv
hey - can you explain a bit on how you use trello for project-oriented
bookmarks? or is it just links in a tile?

------
F_J_H
I just use Evernote. Search is not great, but with the combination of
notebooks and tags, you can keep things organized fairly well.

And, with the browser plugin, any google search also returns results from
Evernote, which is good because if I thought it worthwhile to clip the page in
the past, it was probably a good one.

------
msravi
I use quiver for both notes and bookmarks
([https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver](https://github.com/HappenApps/Quiver)),
with the data residing on Google drive. My reasons (YMMV):

1\. The data format is clean and open. At some point if the app becomes
unavailable for whatever reason, I can write my own to retrieve my data. Or
someone will.

2\. There's an unofficial app for Android called "quaver". It's not very
polished, but when linked with a folder synced to Google drive, it allows me
to access/edit my notes on mobile.

3\. Search is pretty good. You can tag stuff, arrange by folders, and search.

4\. It can store attachments.

5\. Sometimes if I think I need an offline version of a page, I just do a
copy-paste and save it in quiver. Or sometimes I just save the page as PDF and
add it to quiver.

~~~
mthoms
>3\. Search is pretty good. You can tag stuff, arrange by folders, and search.

Astonishingly, there's no search and replace. Like.. at all.

Incredibly frustrating because it's such an incredible app otherwise.

------
marmot777
I'd like to say thanks to those who replied. I frankly didn't think anyone
would upvote this, thinking it was too trivial. Thank you for the upvotes and
thank you for the suggestions. Maybe one of these solutions will do the trick
or maybe more than one is the best way.

------
snake_case
So, I've actually been working on a bookmarks manager for myself
(screenshot)[1].

I have this exact same problem.. so many links and no good way to organize
them. My previous solution was a simple markdown file that I would add my
links to and then generate an html page served through my website. But this
got really cumbersome. I wanted something easier to manage/edit, so I made
this.

Is anyone interested in trying this out? If so, check out my profile contact
info and I'd be happy to discuss it :) I'm very close to having the mvp
complete, and it would be nice to get some feedback before opening it up to
the public more.

[1]: [http://i.imgur.com/LKSQuT4.png](http://i.imgur.com/LKSQuT4.png)

~~~
stevekemp
You might enjoy this project I put together:

[https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public/](https://github.com/skx/bookmarks.public/)

Demo:

[http://skx.github.io/bookmarks.public/](http://skx.github.io/bookmarks.public/)

New bookmarks are just appended to a data-file, and jQuery/javascript magic
makes it easy to discover things. I store my own bookmarks in a git-repository
so I can clone to ~/Repos/personal/bookmarks/ on each of my systems.

~~~
snake_case
Yes, I saw this a few months ago on HN! Actually, it's got a lot of great
features, but lacking the layout I'm personally looking for. The 3 col layout
(in my screenshot), along with visible favicons, allows me to quickly glance
and find what I'm looking for without having to scroll to far. I also plan on
adding a quick filter search too.

Great job on your app though, it's very functional and much better than other
bookmarking solutions I've seen.

------
burkemw3
What do you want to do with your bookmarks?

I think using Pocket (mentioned in comments, not by you) solves a different
problem than browser bookmarks, for example. Describing your desires may help
the community describe (or build!) options.

~~~
marmot777
Okay enough people have mentioned pocket and I tested and dropped it that I
think I'll make pocket my final test of the evening. I'd say I feel a sense of
accomplishment that I organized insanely cluttered bookmarks on a Saturday
night, despite how pathetic that might sound when I say it out loud. :-)

------
Meltdown
Create a FlipBoard account, create as many private magazines (categories) as
you want, install the bookmarklet and flip/bookmark away.

~~~
marmot777
I have Flipboard but I have not tried using it in this way. I'll give that a
spin, too. I didn't even realize it had a private magazine feature.

------
simplehuman
How about [https://meemo.minimal-space.de/](https://meemo.minimal-space.de/) ?

------
wycx
I have found myself using TiddlyWiki for this. I have pages on topics in which
I put links and notes. It supports tags also.

~~~
AstroJetson
I use a wiki too, I have a bookmark that makes an entry on the page I enter
along with a comment.

------
crashbunny
A nextcloud solution would be awesome to me. Would need a browser plugin to
simplify the page and upload it to nextcloud, then nextcloud could work out
what tags would be appropriate for it, and you could add some more if needed.

------
garrrg
I put links on notes in Google Keep grouped in some fashion. Some overlap, but
that's okay. I think I saw someone post on HN that they used Keep for that
which prompted me to do it.

------
tmaly
I use Google Bookmarks with tags, but even then I can lose stuff. I had
thought to record them as prolog facts with url and a list of tags and date.
then build out some synonyms for the tags.

------
jbpetersen
A manually edited file with a JSON-like syntax for different tags and items
listed under each. Regularly left open with several other text files used for
personal organization.

------
mitenmit
[http://moovlink.com](http://moovlink.com) \- you can organise links into
cathegories, rearrange them, tag them, search for links ...

~~~
marmot777
Socialize your bookmarks? Is that a thing? I'm trying to imagine my friends
adding bookmarks for me. It'd be interesting if nothing else.

------
pcr0
What sort of bookmark numbers are you looking at?

I currently have about 2000 articles on Pocket, and just tagging + simple
search works for me.

------
rookiemaverick
I use pocket and surprised to see no one mentioned it. Is it nt that good? Now
curious to know.

------
cottonseed
I have an HTML file along with my dot-files that I keep synchronized in git.

------
chuckdries
I use pocket. It even adds a "save to pocket" button to hacker news!

------
LorenzoLlamas
It's crazy to think that hackers/developers/etc are using all these cloud-
based things with slow interfaces and controlled schemes by third parties. I'm
not even a true geek and I find this behavior a bit bewildering. Where are the
heroes?

Export your bookmarks to HTML, modify your HTML page to be as many sub-pages
as you want, add descriptions under each, and you're done. Put your main page
with your chief faves as your only "saved" bookmark on your browser.

No clouds. No one can erase your data. No one can charge you for your own
bookmarks (the absolute height of insanity).

Modify as you see fit in your fave code editor.

Oh my... you must use Cmd-D because you are in a rush? Trust me. If you're
that in a rush, you aren't even cataloging or archiving the source correctly.
And honestly, probably 90% of bookmarks aren't worth saving anyway. You do
know about search engines, right?

I also like to add notes as to Why I Saved This: because if I can't really
drum up a good reason, it isn't worth it. Things that do NOT count for that
field are "for later", "because", "it's cool", "maybe so-and-so might need it"
(what are we doing? saving for other people too?).

You can use tags if you want in your descriptions by putting a hashtag in
front of the word, but why bother? You can Ctrl/Cmd-F your whole bookmark page
and fly through your options far faster than other methods. All text is
searchable, right? Must we insist on the insanity of prefixing certain words
with #?

Look ma! You can even change your fonts and get all hackathonish with CSS, if
you get bored.

Need to send a collection of bookmarks to someone else? (Warning above about
this, but still....)... Just cut and paste part of your webpage into your
email, etc. Look at that. Your descriptions are already there, guaranteeing
that they will be more likely to look at your links, or causing you to be
noted as an intrusive link-pusher, but either way, goal accomplished!

Now, some HN readers will insist on mobile-sync. That's where they are wrong
and you'll be right to ignore them. Anything worth reading or noting is on the
real web, not the mobile web, and standing around with your phone collecting
and sending links is about as inhumane of a task as you can do. It was bad on
your laptop; it's downright madness on your phone. Do yourself a favor and
skip it.

If you must save _some_ links for mobile use only (I don't know... the website
of your local library so you can look up its hours? Oh wait... Google/Apple
maps instead), then just save them ONLY there for quick access. You don't need
to sync. Repeat after me. Sync is a lie from the devil to give clouds the
power. Stop doing it so much. Also, stop printing stuff (another lecture for
another time).

