For the last few days, I have been re-organizing my personal collections. One of my collections is a list of websites, saved as bookmarks on Chrome. I have about 1700 bookmarks saved. Some of them are outdated and may no longer be of use, but I found many of them are still helpful.

Although Chrome bookmarks does its job, since I was planning to re-organize bookmarks, I decided to take a look at the market and see if there are better products I have been missing out on. Who knows, there might be some features that I didn’t know I needed!

What I Need

I need a bookmark manager that can handle a large number of bookmarks. I use bookmarks to save resources that I might use in the future. Sometimes these may be useful in a few hours, but some resources are only useful once or twice a year. (For example, setting up a new computer). With the amount of information on the web, quality resources are difficult to find, and this has proven to save me a LOT of effort.

I like everything organized: rather it is through folders or tags. I have my version of the Dewey Decimal Classification system set up for my Google Drive, and I want to make my bookmarks as organized as I am. Because I keep a lot of folders and tags, my bookmark manager should allow for easy navigation of bookmarks. Features like a search bar or customizable views help.

Finally, I prefer anything I use to be open-source. This is my personal philosophy, and also the reason why I like Visual Studio Code, Overleaf, and Mark Text.

Review

1. Raindrop.io

Probably the most popular choice, Raindrop.io indeed had a lot of useful features. The overall design is similar to chrome bookmarks, with a sidebar on the left for the directory tree. However, it went one step further by allowing using different views for each folder. It also had tags for individual bookmarks, but there was no way to set colors for tags.

• ✔️ Has folders (Collections)
• ✔️ Has tags
• ✔️ Has a search bar
• ✔️ Customizable views (Lists, Cards, Headlines, Moodboard)
• ❌ Not open-source
• ❌ Nested folders behind a paywall

2. Toby

Toby also seemed to be a popular choice for bookmark management, and it was interesting how I can just drag open tabs into Toby to save them. However, it seemed like Toby was geared more for those who have less than 100 bookmarks, as it did not offer nested folders or tags and only supported grid view.

• ✔️ Has folders (Collections)
• ✔️ No search bar
• ❌ No nested folders
• ❌ No tags (for individual bookmarks)
• ❌ No customizable views: only grid view
• ❌ Not open-source

3. Pocket

Pocket doesn’t really call itself a bookmark manager, but I have seen people using it as one. It is geared for those who use bookmarks as a reminder to read later. As a result, it did not support folders, which was the deal-breaker for me.

• ✔️ Has tags
• ✔️ Has a search bar
• ❌ No folders
• ❌ No customizable views: only card view
• ❌ Not open-source

4. Bookmark OS

Bookmark OS is definitely unique in its appearance: it looks like you just opened a file explorer. Despite its appearance, it is a bookmark manager, and it is one packed with features I need. Organizing bookmarks is easily done through folders and tags, and views can be customized. Furthermore, like a file explorer, it saves when the bookmark was created and when it was last opened, which can definitely be a useful feature.

• ✔️ Has folders
• ✔️ Has tags
• ✔️ Has a search bar
• ✔️ Customizable views (Lists, Cards, Grid)
• ❌ Not open-source

5. Shaarli

Shaarli is the only open-source bookmark manager on this list. Unfortunately, I did not find any open-source bookmark managers that supported folders, which was again the deal-breaker.

• ✔️ Has tags
• ✔️ Has a search bar
• ❌ Is open-source
• ❌ No folders
• ❌ No customizable views: only list view

Conclusion

Raindrop.io and Bookmark OS came out strong, having all four features I wanted. Unfortunately, both of them are closed source software. Although great products with good UI, Toby and Pocket did not fit my use case, unfortunately. Shaarli is a good open-source alternative but has limited features with dated UI.

Although Raindrop.io and Bookmark OS offer very similar features, they have significantly different UI. Raindrop.io has a directory tree diagram on the sidebar for navigation. Although Bookmark OS also has the same directory tree diagram in the sidebar, its main navigation is through the UI that looks like a file explorer.

In the end, I decided to go with Raindrop.io. The chrome extension felt more responsive, and a trash folder was a nice plus. Also, it supports dark mode :)