Bookmarks.txt is a concept of keeping URLs in plain text files
29 comments
·August 28, 2025politelemon
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.
Wololooo
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 converted into a dictionary, array that can be used in the program if some URLs are supposed to be used there.
It's not revolutionary by any means, but I have to confess that it didn't occur to me that's a great per repo documentation reference tool or per folder.
adastra22
You don’t have bookmark sync in your browser?
teiferer
Is there a reliable standard to do this across browser vendors and versions and not have to rely on a proprietary cloud implementation on somebody's server?
_kidlike
we do something similar. IntelliJ (ultimate) has a text-based http client included. Like postman but you can commit .http files to the repo. Then this client has variables which can come from a json file. So basically all URLs that our software uses, are in that file. Eventually this led to the json file being used by scripts too.
crossroadsguy
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.
II2II
For some people, they have no need for bookmarks. For other people, bookmarks may be useful but the implementation is not.
Reading the author's description made me realize how unbookmark-like bookmarks actually are. The current implementations are somewhat akin to creating a list of books that you like at the library. It's not so much a pointer to the information you found useful, as it is a list of books you found useful. You still have to do some digging when you go back for the book. If the book is lost, you end up having a reference to something that you cannot obtain. And if you just add books to the end of your list, you still end up having to search through the list. The only way around that is to spend time organizing your list. It's no wonder why bookmarks are useless to so many people.
The author doesn't really solve the problem with bookmarks, except for one. The last one. By sticking a bookmarks file in a project directory, at least you're only searching through a list of bookmarks relevant to the project. If you are no longer interested in the project and delete it, you're also getting rid of bookmarks that you (hopefully) no longer need. It also addresses the portability of bookmarks. As far as I can tell, the only way to move bookmarks between any of the major browsers involves the use of special software or network services. Look at moving bookmarks from one Firefox installation to another: you either use online sync, export to HTML to import from HTML, or import the database (which replaces your current bookmarks with the ones being imported).
crossroadsguy
I see your point. Also, maybe to add to it, I should have been rather judicious in collecting bookmarks.
And — possibly to also literally keep them inside the browser’s default bookmarks/favourites whatever browser one uses. Not on some fancy service with AI and what not.
enos_feedler
I spend most of my days wading through the web. When i come across something that excites me I share the link to apple Notes. I dont write anything. Its just a bookmark. In February I spent a week sorting 5000 links into folders. It was quite satisfying to guess why i saved things, find patterns, create an organizational structure etc. the activity yielded both motivation and direction for my personal projects.
AbuAssar
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.
teiferer
Use archive.org for permalinks?
selcuka
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.
dcrazy
I was wondering if someone else would remember this.
pmlnr
Don't. Link rot is harsh. Something like wallabag saved so much content for me that is otherwise now lost.
3036e4
Scrapbook was (is?) great, since it does everything bookmarks do plus saves a copy of the page just the way it currently looks and makes that available in the browser.
I switched to saving pages using SinglePage instead, that saves the current page as a single stand-alone HTML file. It loses the bookmark-like features, but I can sort those saved files easier in my file system to keep them like any other downloaded documents on various topics. Each file also by default has a comment near the top with its original URL, so it would be easy to write a script to find all of those and build something like bookmarks.html.
bmacho
Ctrl+s > ctrl+d.
No link rot + it's available without internet.
sdovan1
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.
[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/bookmarks-firefox#w_how...
3036e4
I configured Firefox to only ever auto-complete to bookmarks or open tabs, never some random thing from my browser history. That also makes it very easy to find specific pages and I do not have to memorize any tags.
alexmonami
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.
rickcarlino
Reminds me of GemText somewhat. https://geminiprotocol.net/docs/gemtext.gmi
KingOfCoders
Need to take a look.
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.
redkoala
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.
dcrazy
Why not just use actual bookmarks in Safari?
andymurd
Isn't that how del.icio.us started all this bookmarking in the first place?
I do this, albeit, kinda a Start Page. I like it because it is plain-text, and I can access it from any browser (not just the ones I bookmarked with).
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