Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files • Hacker News Board

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#101

Post by jibal » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 1:36 PM UTC

tconfrey wrote: post #99

nairadithya wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you go over how you save bookmarks with Emacs, I'm curious as a fellow Emacs user.

Take a look at BrainTool. It's a bookmarks/tabs/todo-manager browser extension that writes to an org-mode syntax text file. Allows you to capture notes, containment hierarchy, to-do state etc and expose it all to your org PKMS. (Disclosure, I'm the developer.) https://braintool.org https://github.com/tconfrey/BrainTool

Does it work in Edge?

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#102

Post by esafak » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:23 PM UTC

motorest wrote: post #67

crossroadsguy wrote: post #9

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 bookmar…

> The thing is - I just saved bookmarks, I never really utilised them ever, to find something, to go back to. You're not describing a bookmarks issue. You're describing a personal organization issue, which is reflected on how you manage bookmarks. You're voicing the exact same sort of complains often directed at todo lists. In fact, from your description you're implicitly treating bookmarks as ad-hoc Todo lists, and…

Because it represents wasted time and cognitive load. It's a vestigial habit from an era when search was bad. Between (AI) search and browser history, I don't see much need for bookmarks.

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#103

Post by dcrazy » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

johnisgood wrote: post #48

dcrazy wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was wondering if someone else would remember this.

Remember? I just exported bookmarks as a HTML a few days ago. :o

I was referring to the time when Bookmarks.html was Netscape/Mozilla/Firefox’s actual on-disk storage format, not just its import/export format. Editing that file would change the contents of your Bookmarks menu.

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#104

Post by rafram » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:43 PM UTC

Every browser already supports importing and exporting the Netscape Bookmark file format [1]. Is it a great format? ...No. But it's very widely supported and easy to parse.

[1]: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/previous-versions/windows/...

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#105

Post by kevinmgranger » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:46 PM UTC

politelemon wrote: post #11

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've often wished I could find back-references and search my bookmarks as if they were part of my Obsidian database. This would help with that.

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#106

Post by Wololooo » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:50 PM UTC

adastra22 wrote: post #24

Wololooo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, actually I could see a use for this in specific context and use cases, for instance if you happen to have different dev environments you're able to just move from machine to machine while keeping all the bookmarks in the repository. If you organise them you can even reference them from the codebase, or the documentation to avoid clutter. The format is simple and dumb enough so that a simple bookmark.txt can be…

You don’t have bookmark sync in your browser?

Sure, but what tells you that I want to log into those work machines with my personal account?

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#107

Post by lolive » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:51 PM UTC

I use Obsidian for that. A note=a URL, a screenshot, an explanation.

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#108

Post by mathiaspoint » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:52 PM UTC

Most browsers already have built-in support for bidirectional sync with a very plain bookmarks.html file. Even lynx/elinks. This is what I do.

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#109

Post by shubham13596 » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

this is interesting but anyone has tried to create a small scale version of their own search engine using only their bookmark links. I am surprised why that's not more common. If someone has 5k+ bookmark links and wants only results from those links given a query, it should be straightforward.

Re: Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files

#110

Post by 4fips » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 2:55 PM UTC

The only browser bookmark I use is:

    javascript:window.prompt("Title + URL:",document.title+"\n"+document.URL);

Which when clicked, opens an alert with 2 lines like this:

    Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files | Hacker News
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45047572

I then paste this into my bookmarks.txt and have a simple text editor script to perform fuzzy searching on it and open a web browser tab with the found URL.