How do you manage your browser bookmarks?

I'm stuck.
I have accumulated a decent set of browser bookmarks, both in the browser and in my notes. And I need to combine them somehow, comb a little and structure the whole set to make it more accessible. Like, tools, articles, documentation, whatnot.
Currently, I use default browser bookmarking capabilities and divide links by topics (in a deeply nested way). I don't use any specific tools, though I had taken a look at a bunch of them and didn't stop at anything.

What is your way of keeping your bookmarks in order? What tools do you use? How do you structure the whole system? What is your approach to fast access and synchronization?

Comments

[Ben Halpern]

Poorly

[Pierpaolo 'pier' Pernici]

Very very very poorly too :( it's a mess!

[Adrian Matei]

Same for me until I took the matter in my own hands..

[Dustin]

Same here!! It's so bad

[Fyodor]

🙌

[Pierpaolo 'pier' Pernici]

My biggest concern is that I jump from Chrome to Safari and back! shrugs

[Fyodor]

Yep! Exactly! I use a couple of browsers too and it would be very convenient to have a sync'able approach to bookmarks management

[Ryan Collins]

I switched to Shaarli this past year. Installation was a piece of cake, I threw it in a subfolder on my personal Wordpress site.

There is a Chrome extension to add bookmarks, and also a cli tool. I use a Shortcut on my iPhone that uses the cli tool to add bookmarks from my phone.

Shaarli uses tags for organization, so it's really easy to organize links as I add them. So far I have 599 links saved since July 15.

There are two other features I like. One, is that bookmarks can be made public, so you can easily share them with others, and two, RSS feeds can be generated from searches, or tags.

[Fyodor]

The true dev approach to bookmarking 👍 thanks for sharing, I’ll dive into that

[corvusgoosy]

I was also using shaarli for the better part of a year. I've never found a good solution since del.icio.us fell away back in the day. Someone brought back the idea that was original del.icio.us it's now known as Pinboard. Highly recommended. If that's not your deal the bookmarking abilities of Notion are pretty profound, reminds me of old school Evernote before feature-creep almost killed the company. Good luck in your search!

Edit: just saw your responses about notion and that makes me suggest to you Pinboard even more.

[Fyodor]

They've chosen a very original target market - "social bookmarks for introverts") But anyway, it looks interesting and distraction-free. I'll play with this service, thanks a lot 👍

[Gerardo Alcantara]

I did a Pinboard with a11y dev articles and best practice, I'm sure the target market of pinterest, will never use my board but I made it for me first, to have a place to find the articles in one go insted of the bookmarks that I also have (with the same links); then if someone want to use it is ok for me, I agreed that normaly noone will go and search pinterest for a11y articles or links, however my intend it was to find other solution for bookmarks. And it work for my personal preferences.

I keep my mind and ears open for more sutible solution if anyone has it let me know. 🤓

[EliodRän]

same here ^{^}

[Charles-Eugene Loubao]

Hi @EliodRän!

Charles here. Have you found a good bookmark app to solve your problems? If not I am working on a new bookmark app that will combine notes and bookmarks and I would like to have a quick chat with you about what problems you are facing with existing apps and possibly become a early adopter for my app.

If you are interested DM me here on Dev.to or send me an email [e-mail] :)
Thanks.

[yogibaba]

Using Shaarli past 5 years and is great, currently evaluating linkding.

[Ryan Collins]

Looks a little heavy, what are the advantages of linkding over Shaarli?

[yogibaba]

Shaarli is better.

[🦄N B🛡]

First impressions here, but that does not sound secure.

[Ryan Collins]

There are .htaccess files in the appropriate folders to stop any rando from downloading the bookmarks files. Unless I'm missing something else you found. 😃

[Petr Flaks]

You're welcome to try my Chrome extension called Camellia, I have created it to solve a problem with 100+ bookmarks visualization hell. It uses native Chrome bookmarks, so they will sync across all your Chrome installations.

At this moment it's only for Chrome, but I'm planning radical refactoring with full Firefox support and a lot of other improvements (including design).

[Fyodor]

Thanks, Petr! I'll try it 👍

[Mateus Vahl]

I actually don't have a lot of items, but I like to keep a few shortcuts:

Everything else is throw into folders,
You can also try use the chrome://bookmarks (url) to better visualize your bookmarks.

[Fyodor]

The folders part is the trickiest one actually) I have a pile of information (mostly useful but not structured in an effective way) in them. I use the corresponding browser tools like a pro already, but it doesn't help very much.

[Matt Cobley]

I'd recommend Pocket (getpocket.com/). It's now owned by Mozilla and allows you to save pages as you would bookmarks, but with added features. Pages can be stored for offline reading, you add multiple tags to pages (more powerful than using a folder structure), and there are browser extensions across all the main browsers, plus good Android and iOS apps. And it's all free!

[Fyodor]

I use pocket a lot for reading, but didn’t think about it as a bookmark manager. Thanks for the idea, I’ll try to test the concept 👍

[Florian Rand]

I've been using larder.io and I'm very happy with it. My two favorite features are Github star and StackOverflow sync. It also has a very nice API to play with.

Even if that's not enough, the idea of supporting (economically) the small indie studio behind it was enough reason to start using it.

[Fyodor]

wow, larder.io looks really cool from the first sight, and it's really dev-oriented. I need to try it asap 👍 I'm totally fine with pricing if it works well enough!

Florian, what is your approach to categorizing, btw?

[Florian Rand]

I try to keep it simple, general categories and subcategories, with propper tags to speed up searches. But I must admit, in practice, I'm a mess organizing them.

[Fyodor]

Me too) looks like we need some kind of GTD methodology but for bookmarking)

[Florian Rand]

That would be a great idea indeed :D

[Alexandre Plennevaux]

I made my own Chrome Extension to easily store on the go, then retrieve using full text search of the TITLE meta.... This way, I don't need a structured folder organization, I can rely solely on keywords, which, of course, I must think about when storing the bookmark.

It has worked very well for me : chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...

[Fyodor]

I like that, thanks a lot, Alexandre! Will try to work with my bookmarks this way for some time 👍

[Giorgos Kontopoulos 👀]

@pixeline I must say this is very useful, already posted some suggestions on your issue queue

[Alexandre Plennevaux]

oh cool! I'll look into it! I'm pretty swarmed at the moment but i look forward to working on it, it's been a while i haven't updated it. Thanks !!

[E Cognito]

The bulk of my bookmarks are in Pinboard with appropriate tags. Frequent bookmarks and stuff I want easy reference to in the bookmark toolbar, and a few other folders and stuff that have kind of grown organically.

There's an extension for Chrome that I use occasionally to sync (one-way) to a folder in the browser's bookmarks. Allocated into sub-folders by tag. (I really wish there was something similar for Firefox!!!)

I use xBrowserSync to keep bookmarks synchronised between my Firefox and Chrome browsers. (I really miss Xmarks.)

[Fyodor]

I remember using Xmarks too, it was a convenient service. Though it didn't solve all the problems, as well as today's tools.

[E Cognito]

What are today's tools?

I use the aforementioned xBrowserSync, and keep an eye on Floccus but neither are as good as Xmarks was IMO.

[Ghost]

I just keep adding them and once a year I make a folder called older{next_available_int}, and those folder are forgotten forever. "If you like a website, set them free. If it come back cool; if they don't, must be happier in the browser of someone else, it wasn't meant to be."

It's pretty much a luck based system. Somehow gives me comfort to know they are not lost in the web, just lost between thousands of other bookmarks.

[Fyodor]

You are bookmarking cowboy) is it really possible to find anything then inside those oldies?)

[Ghost]

no idea, I've never tried, too scared...

[MadeAlive]

Great topic for discussion, I made an account just to comment and follow. Please share when you adapt a new system.
I find myself in certain situations where I need to organize bookmarks, and also take notes, or save collaboration or meeting info for best access at a later time. If you are working with a team how do you keep project meeting notes, and action items sorted? What tools do you use for that?

Keeping focused on your situation:
What is your way of keeping your bookmarks in order? I use folders based on topic and date, this has pros and cons. For example, I'm taking a course and searching for a specific solution, I create a new folder for today's date under the folder for JavaScript course.
Pros: This makes it easy to review notes and searches when going over the course or sharing with someone else. This also works when doing research for a project or article. Cons: Can be hard to find if I forget what day or what course and I need a certain tool or answer again.

What tools do you use? I've just recently switched to using LastPass for managing my logins. There is a free and paid version. The enterprise version is what we use at work. Allows for sharing folders of sites, passwords with the team. Install the app, and use the browser extension and all synced up. I login to chrome to save and sync bookmarks, works with Android phone pretty smooth.
For taking notes I've tried so many tools going to test some shared in comments. Also going to try MS Notes again, recently heard it will OCR text from images of whiteboard.

How do you structure the whole system? I use LastPass for all sites needing login, can easily go to folders and open the page in the extension or app. This saves me from needing a folder for that in my bookmarks. I have a topical main folder in the bookmarks bar, only one sub folder based on date or more detail. Recycle those quarterly, export to a file, then delete what I no longer use. So far I've been fine with just using the import bookmarks feature on any other browser after that update. I use chrome for most things, Firefox occasionally. For testing brave or opera.

What is your approach to fast access and synchronization? May have already answered this, I think the point of failure or when my system gets slow is when I don't plan my project or search, or the folder topic isn't clear. Also it takes time to review and recycle then import to another browser.

[Fyodor]

Wow, thanks for the comprehensive comment!

I'll definitely share the results of testing of the most suitable solutions mentioned here in about a month :)

I use macOS' Notes for storing and structuring project notes. It's the fastest solution and has all the necessary features today.

Your way of storing bookmarks gave me the idea of practicing something like "expiration date" for a bookmark - if it's not "resolved" in some time, it can be deleted... It would be useful for some kind of bookmarks. And would help to keep a kind of automated order in the system. I'm interested if there's such feature in some of the tools listed inside this discussion...

Fast access and synchronization are my main concerns here too. Because default browser solutions don't provide for it (except for Firefox in some way - tags at least). Possibly some kind of close-to-native-browser solution (something on top of internal bookmarks) will be the most effective one. I'll test the options and try to find the answer.