Bookmarks... This is a rabbit hole I dive down at least once a year. And always come up disappointed.

The problem with discussing bookmarks is that everyone has different needs. Some people want a system that takes snapshots, generates pdfs, allows for offline viewing, creates AI summaries, lets you share with other users, (supports other users), archives everything into a database, and more. Other folks just want a simple, literal bookmark system that only manages links to websites.

If you're in the latter category (like I am), the perfect system already exists. It's called xBrowserSync and it's wonderful. It's open source. You can self-host the sync server. Data is encrypted before leaving the client. It has browser extensions. It has an Android app. And it uses tags / search instead of endlessly nested folders.

But there's one huge problem: The project has been abandoned for years. The public sync servers are still up and running. But the Chrome extension has fallen into disrepair. I use Firefox, so I'm still good, but for how long?

And so every year I go on this quest to gauge the state of bookmark managers. It seems everyone is trying to build the 1st kind of system. I get it. You're not gonna convert users to subscriptions with a simple link database. But that's not the system I want.

So if you're just looking to sync web links between devices, in a private, browser agnostic way, organized with search tags instead of folders, and without having to manage a huge tech stack. Your current options are: xBrwoserSync, Linkding, Shaarli, and LinkAce.