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

#51

Post by dariosalvi78 » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:22 AM UTC

dcrazy wrote: post #15

selcuka wrote: post #8

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.

I was wondering if someone else would remember this.

I do! And still thought it was the case! In fact the first reaction to this txt thing was: well, we already have them in html, why txt?

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

#52

Post by darekkay » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:23 AM UTC

I've been maintaining my bookmarks as plain text (YAML) for years, which I then turn into a single interactive HTML file [1].

[1] https://darekkay.com/static-marks/

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

#53

Post by Ciantic » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:25 AM UTC

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.

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

#54

Post by dkdcio » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:30 AM UTC

I’ve been doing something similar for years, more recently published at https://github.com/lostmygithubaccount/dkdc-links

reading through this thread I’m seeing people use bookmarks to save dozens of new URLs per day, which is very surprising to me

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

#55

Post by selectnull » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:33 AM UTC

tugberkk wrote: post #50

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…

you can write a program which randomly opens up a bookmark so you can get notified at least per some day/week.

and then write a program which detects a randomly opened bookmark and closes it because i'm in the middle of something important and can't be bothered right now.

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

#56

Post by nerd-unsecured » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:43 AM UTC

(Probably skip if you don't want to read a ~rant..) Questions: - New "format"? It is a CSV with spaces as separators and no header? Why? - Global file located in the home directory? Why would you want another file to pollute the $HOME? Why not just $BOOKMARKS_FILE or something? - Local bookmarks file - why don't just reuse README.md? Add 'Resources' section and chuck markdown links in it, parsing that is not (much) harder, and you get nothing more with a separate 'bookmarks.txt' file. As some other comments pointed out, there are no tags, no (semantic) grouping, no content archiving, etc... This is just a list of URL with optional title attached to them, this is not a distinct 'concept'...

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

#57

Post by est » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:59 AM UTC

what problem does this solve?

For frequent websites I can remember their TLD and navigate to the panel I wanted

For content saving a URL is not enough. Gotta save the full page or it might be gone very soon.

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

#58

Post by __dennis__ » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 7:59 AM UTC

I've made my own private bookmark browser extension that syncs e2ee across my devices. Because it's an extension I can open bookmarks automatically in a private tab and much more.

After some years of using this extension every day I decided to make it available for others as well. You can find it here, free forever: markbook.io This was just a side project I did in about 6 months of my spare time, definitely not a polished product that's trying to become the next billion dollar enterprise.

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

#59

Post by donkeybeer » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 8:10 AM UTC

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…

They have always been useful to me. Whenever I had problems, it turns out because I hadn't bookmarked enough. In general I bookmark for anything that I knew once and found difficult to search for the next time when I forgot about it.

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

#60

Post by jcynix » Thu, Aug 28, 2025, 8:14 AM UTC

kiicia wrote: post #40

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…

having bookmark you don't use is one thing, but linkrot of that one bookmark you actually do need is much worse

To combat link rot I use an applet which looks up a link at archive.org and when I visit an interesting site (of supposedly longer lasting value) I check if it's archived already. If not I ask the way back machine to store it.