I’m using a similar format to keep my links organized on an iPhone. A bookmarks.txt note kept in Apple Notes with markdown # headings to separate each category, allowing me to not keep open 500 tabs on Safari.
For my CTO newsletter I use raindrop.io to store interesting articles I encounter, export them to CSV (like bookmarks.txt), sort, filter and remove 90%, convert them to my own format, write my content and convert them to Markdown and then to HTML with Hugo.
I needed to keep the highlighted text as well. With ChatGPT I have created an extension [1] that lets me capture highlights from any webpage and send them directly to a Notion database along with the page URL, capture date, and a per-selected project tag.
Mozilla-based browsers used to (before Firefox 3, I believe) store bookmarks as HTML (bookmarks.html) instead of using an SQLite database. It still uses a single HTML file when exporting or importing bookmarks.
Bookmarks are something I have grown tired of. From the days of del.icio.us, I started collecting bookmarks and it kind of trickled along almost until Pinboard went on life support (or something else if you'd prefer to call that).
The thing is - I just saved bookmarks, I never really utilised them ever, to find something, to go back to. I can remember once or twice and either I couldn't find anything among my bookmarks or the sites were long gone. I really don't think I personally had to consult my thousands of bookmarks (which I have now dutifully migrated to Raindrop of course, because why the hell not) in any useful sense ever. I paid for a couple of archiving services as well before realising "nah, I don't really need that, nor this recurring outgoing payment in my life".
So like a lot of things on the Internet, I guess I did "bookmarking things" just for the sake of doing "bookmarking things".
That reminds me of note-taking. There was a time when I used to do "note-taking exploration and research" and never really took any notes or, hell, even needed them. When I started note-taking, while I still keep an eye out for a decent app, I just pick a decent or half-decent note-taking app and I just take notes. Oh, backup and sync tools and services. Those too - there was "explore and research" and now there's "just use something damnit". "TODOing" to, yes! I am sure this tool (or philosophy? style? bookmarking architecture?) is very nice and novel.
This is not at all reflecting on why or why not one should do such "things", I absolutely believe this is good and sometimes in fact results in tools/services massively good, I am just talking about this out loud wondering whether it's just me or this kind of fatigue really sets in for other people as well.
Given that the aim is to still visit the URL, this appears to be browser bookmarks with extra steps. I am not seeing an advantage to the external storage mechanism and the overhead it brings.
Browsers have been doing an excellent job of managing bookmarks, you can tag and search for them from the address bar itself which is very convenient.
I never really used browser bookmarks until I discovered Firefox's bookmark keyword feature [1]. It basically eliminates the search step. For example, I set "pr" to the GitHub pull request page. Just press Alt + D to focus the address bar, type the keyword, and hit Enter.
I have become somewhat disillusioned with maintaining a list of bookmarks, as I often discover that the URLs are no longer functional when revisiting pages that have been bookmarked for an extended period.
I've been doing exactly this for ten years, keeping the bookmarks file in Git. I added 70 bookmarks today, which is more than average. But rather than just a "title" I have whatever seems like I might want to search for later, including if the link rots. So it's more of a summmary. With hashtags. In Markdown (though without newlines).
Each new day gets a header.
Here's Sunday, with blank lines added to get reasonable formatting on HN:
https://youtu.be/Nn5v59l2Xec?t=64 VEMAG brand double-screw extruder screw pump #mechanisms pumping M&Ms and ground meat. #video footage of the parts being washed.
I think that is a good idea to keep URLs as text. I use the Tab Session Manager extension which allows me to export saved sessions (title, URL, with a little bit of extra stuff) as text (json actually, a little bit too verbose) and I also use Eagle Filer to save entire web pages, just in case it disappears from the web, which happens quite regularly. What I want is the title of the web page associated with its URL and maybe extra keywords. I don't use classic browser bookmarks much anymore.
This is needed, TIL but only till recently did Firefox remove their bookmarks limit, it was something like 6000 about 3 years ago.
(For those curious about why one needs so many bookmarks, similar to maybe some other people, I use the bookmark feature as a "like" to save articles/URLs I find interesting).
I actually do this. I put urls and files in a text file. Which I parse with rofi. The reason why I do this is so I can just open rofi with a shortcut and type out the name of the file or url and instantly open it.
I think that people who say they prefer keeping a simple file has never found a good app for bookmarking. There is still a space for killer app with bookmarks.
I think that simple URL bookmarking is just wrong. It simply will not work for big bookmarking data sets. The key is using tags, and rating system, and automatic update which checks if URLs are even valid any more.
I also thought that we miss a killer RSS app.
That is why I created my own self-hosted app.
- it can store bookmarks
- it gather news through RSS
- it provides tags (I can search bookmarks by tags)
- it provides user ratings (I can filter using it too)
- I can filter, or order by link, date of publish, date of creation, etc. etc.
- It checks if links are rotten (and marks them)
- I can mark link to read it for later
- I can see how many times I have visited a link
- I can check 'related links' to jump to things I have jump before from this link
On the other hand, I am quite certain that I use it, because it is 'tailored for me'. I am not that interested in the looks. I know how it works
Just in case, If you want to index the content of these bookmarks for searching maybe my little wip tool face is useful to you. As it’s also a local server you can use a keyword search in browsers for it. https://github.com/svandragt/fafi
I have my own Chrome/Firefox extension that shows bookmarks in the new tab page ordered by recency with a search field on top, it's pretty good for me. Every time I open a new tab, I see the latest bookmarks I've added. Granted, I don't usually bother to browse older ones, but at least I see ~15 new ones on (desktop monitor) every day.
Also, I sometimes add a snippet of text from the content to the title of the bookmark, making it easier to search afterwards.
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[ 6.9 ms ] story [ 70.3 ms ] threadFor my CTO newsletter I use raindrop.io to store interesting articles I encounter, export them to CSV (like bookmarks.txt), sort, filter and remove 90%, convert them to my own format, write my content and convert them to Markdown and then to HTML with Hugo.
[1]https://github.com/sea2ocean/keeper
The thing is - I just saved bookmarks, I never really utilised them ever, to find something, to go back to. I can remember once or twice and either I couldn't find anything among my bookmarks or the sites were long gone. I really don't think I personally had to consult my thousands of bookmarks (which I have now dutifully migrated to Raindrop of course, because why the hell not) in any useful sense ever. I paid for a couple of archiving services as well before realising "nah, I don't really need that, nor this recurring outgoing payment in my life".
So like a lot of things on the Internet, I guess I did "bookmarking things" just for the sake of doing "bookmarking things".
That reminds me of note-taking. There was a time when I used to do "note-taking exploration and research" and never really took any notes or, hell, even needed them. When I started note-taking, while I still keep an eye out for a decent app, I just pick a decent or half-decent note-taking app and I just take notes. Oh, backup and sync tools and services. Those too - there was "explore and research" and now there's "just use something damnit". "TODOing" to, yes! I am sure this tool (or philosophy? style? bookmarking architecture?) is very nice and novel.
This is not at all reflecting on why or why not one should do such "things", I absolutely believe this is good and sometimes in fact results in tools/services massively good, I am just talking about this out loud wondering whether it's just me or this kind of fatigue really sets in for other people as well.
Browsers have been doing an excellent job of managing bookmarks, you can tag and search for them from the address bar itself which is very convenient.
Mine is online (rendered client-side) so I can access it from anywhere. https://start.oinam.com
Just in case, anyone wants to look the source is at https://github.com/oinam/start
The source is at https://github.com/wenerme/wener
I found it's very useful, especially the license and basic tech stack & description. One day I will grab the meta and display along with the link.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/bookmarks-firefox#w_how...
Each new day gets a header.
Here's Sunday, with blank lines added to get reasonable formatting on HN:
links from 02025-08-24:
https://archive.org/details/TheDesignOfSwitchingCircuits/pag... My childhood book on digital logic (including a little #electronics) as an #ebook. #hardware
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-intensity_discharge_lamp sodium-arc and mercury-arc lamps are also HID lamps. #hardware
https://archive.org/details/ge-glow-lamp-manual-1966/page/n1... scan of GE’s glow-lamp manual for neon lamps from 01966. #ebook #hardware #electronics #history
https://youtu.be/Nn5v59l2Xec?t=64 VEMAG brand double-screw extruder screw pump #mechanisms pumping M&Ms and ground meat. #video footage of the parts being washed.
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/aleksandro_arz_51_arz51.html very pretty old radio
https://www.nature.com/articles/nmat2141 "Superlenses" to overcome the diffraction limit, #optics #paper from 02008
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_length#Electrical_l... electrically long and short #antennas and loading coils and whatnot. #electronics #communications #radio
https://www.ornl.gov/publication/evaluation-power-fluidic-pu... #fluidics for pumping in #molten-salt #nuclear-reactors (just an abstract)
https://www.hopefulmons.com/p/in-defense-of-tech-trees trying to use "tech trees" to understand the #history of technological development
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fresnel_diffraction near-field #diffraction is "Fresnel diffraction" #optics
https://psi329.cankaya.edu.tr/uploads/files/Lewis-PernFascis... Was #Perón a fascist? #fascism #history #PDF #paper #toread
https://lwn.net/Articles/1030818/ #Treacherous-Computing for “confidential VMs” #privacy despite #Linux #virtualization #toread
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44950482 discussion of alternative ways to run graphical apps inside #Docker, including maybe drawing in a web browser
(For those curious about why one needs so many bookmarks, similar to maybe some other people, I use the bookmark feature as a "like" to save articles/URLs I find interesting).
I think that simple URL bookmarking is just wrong. It simply will not work for big bookmarking data sets. The key is using tags, and rating system, and automatic update which checks if URLs are even valid any more.
I also thought that we miss a killer RSS app.
That is why I created my own self-hosted app.
- it can store bookmarks
- it gather news through RSS
- it provides tags (I can search bookmarks by tags)
- it provides user ratings (I can filter using it too)
- I can filter, or order by link, date of publish, date of creation, etc. etc.
- It checks if links are rotten (and marks them)
- I can mark link to read it for later
- I can see how many times I have visited a link
- I can check 'related links' to jump to things I have jump before from this link
On the other hand, I am quite certain that I use it, because it is 'tailored for me'. I am not that interested in the looks. I know how it works
- https://rumca-js.github.io/search - demo search
- https://rumca-js.github.io/music - demo music
- https://rumca-js.github.io/bookmarks - demo bookmarks
- https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database - database of bookmarks
- https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database - link meta information
- https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive - main crawling engine using for all databases
[1] https://darekkay.com/static-marks/
Also, I sometimes add a snippet of text from the content to the title of the bookmark, making it easier to search afterwards.