To be honest, I’ve never gotten into bookmarks. I just look up everything when I need it. When I was younger, I saved lots of webpages that seemed interesting, but never actually read them. Over the years, my bookmark usage narrowed down to keeping shortcuts in the bookmark bar. Which I then proceeded to permanently hide to maximize my screen real estate.
As I get older though, it’s a feature I’m starting to understand better. Bookmarks as quick shortcuts vs “read later” vs “for reference”. Hopefully this can help you find an implementation that suits your particular needs.
Cloud Service
Raindrop
Raindrop is not open-source.
Raindrop.io is a fully-featured tool for organization and collaboration. At its core, it’s a bookmark manager. It organizes your links into lists/collections based on contexts. You can further organize them using tags, or manually search them with filters. Their API can even automate the addition of links. Connect your YouTube, Twitter, Medium, or other accounts and it adds the links you save or like.
It’s free to use, with some advanced features locked behind a subscription. Their apps are open-source but sadly there’s no option to self-host or sync to your own server. That said, aside from responding to subpoenas, their privacy policy is pretty solid. They don’t use ads or trackers even in their free tier.
They also offer a dedicated RSS/news reading app Inoreader.
Booky
If you’re looking for a managed service, like Raindrop, Booky is another good candidate. It’s completely free, with the only paywalled feature being public collections. They also let you determine the amount you want to support them with, which is pretty cool.
Compared to Raindrop.io, Booky definitely feels like more of a community project than a corporate one. Whether that’s good or bad is entirely a matter of preference. I mean, there’s a reason so many can’t leave Raindrop.io despite what they deem as “sketchy vibes” from the company.
Apple
These options are not open-source.
Apple users have two good choices: Anybox and Goodlinks. Neither is open-source, but I suppose that isn’t the Apple spirit. Nonetheless, both seem pretty upstanding and respectful of privacy.
Self-hosted
Linkwarden
This is my favorite self-hosted bookmark manager. Linkwarden is the most polished open-source approach I’ve seen. It’s very good-looking, packed with features, and completely free.
What I love the most about Linkwarden is that, true to its tagline, it truly preserves links. It’s not just a glorified link collector. It actually keeps a screenshot and a PDF of the webpages. This way you still have access to them, even if they get taken down, changed, or moved.
Wallabag
Wallabag is the go-to recommendation in this category. It focuses more on reading than collaboration. Sorting, tagging, and searching are also available here. As well as annotation and highlighting.
Wallabag is cross-platform. Like many others here, it allows you to import your data from competitors like Pocket. For simplicity, Wallabag offers affordable plans to sync to their European servers. You get API access here too but, overall, don’t expect as much polish.
Frigoligo
Frigoligo is a Wallabag client that prioritizes simplicity without sacrificing features. It takes Wallabug as a base and gives it a fresh coat a paint and some new features. It’s offline-first and tries to keep online interactions to a minimum. Being built on the backbone of Wallabag, it also supports all platforms you can think of. Including many e-readers.
Shiori
Unlike the feature-packed options here, Shiori is laser-focused on its core task. It’s an open-source clone of the popular browser extension Pocket. Save articles and read them in a modern-looking app. That’s it.
12MB. That’s the size of their latest Github release. It’s easily the smallest on this list.
Hoarder
If you don’t mind using a project that isn’t yet ready for primetime, Hoarder is a very promising option. Once you’ve got it set up on your own server, all you have to do is add links. It will automatically use AI to sort and tag them for you so you can easily find them later.
It includes features that you don’t see for free elsewhere. From autofetch that generates link previews, to support for images and even PDFs. You’re not confined to links either. They also support general note-taking and list-making.
Floccus
Bookmark sync is a ubiquitous browser feature at this point. For the privacy conscious, they may prefer a more private way of managing their bookmarks. That’s where Floccus comes in. Floccus offers extensions for all browsers (except Safari) and even an Android app. It lets you sync your bookmarks to Nextcloud, Git, WebDAV, or even simply Google Drive. Whether you’re self-hosting or using their encryption, your data is much safer than it was. It lets you choose what folders to sync, the frequency, and even bidirectional sync.