This is really annoying. I’ve been using Google Bookmarks for many years as a convenient way to have access to my bookmarks from anywhere in the world in a cross-platform manner. And now I need to search for an alternative.
The features I really love and would like to keep are:
Internet-accessible. So I can access them from anywhere without needing to manually transport/sync files.
Cross-platform. Must support Firefox and ideally also Safari. On macOS, Windows, Linux and mobile platforms. At minimum via a web page. Ideally, integrated into the browser’s bookmark system (maybe via an add-on).
I know Apple synchronizes bookmarks via iCloud, but only for Safari on Apple platforms.
Firefox has a bookmark sync feature, but I think it only supports Firefox (but on many platforms).
I can go back to what I did before Google and put all my bookmarks in a web page stored on a public server somewhere, but that’s not nearly as convenient.
I use and like https://pinboard.in/. Since it is a website, it is Internet-accessible and cross-platform. It doesn’t integrate with the browser’s bookmark system, but I have a bookmarklet in my Favourites bar which lets me save a page with three clicks.
It works quite well for me. But your needs might differ from mine. I’m mostly using it as a place to quickly dump useful-seeming pages which I fear I won’t be able to find again easily. I don’t spend any time organising my collection (eg into any kind of hierarchy) - I just search it when I need to find something.
I use it lightly - I add a page a few times a week at most, and search it perhaps once a month. This is because mostly I’m saving references using other systems: text files, OmniOutliner, OmniFocus, Trello etc… I only use Pinboard to file stuff I’ve found randomly during casual browsing.
I have a free Pinboard account, because I signed up long ago. I think that option has gone away and it is now $22 per year, or a little more if you want archiving (which, when you add a page to your collection, saves the current page text as well as the URL - kind of a personal https://archive.org).
Hmmm - but now I read your “put all my bookmarks in a web page stored on a public server” comment again, perhaps your use is actually more the opposite of mine? My use is a dumping ground: I add stuff much more often than I retrieve it. Perhaps yours is more of a curated collection, which you use to help navigation many times a day, but change relatively rarely? In which case - I don’t know if Pinboard is suitable. Perhaps someone else can help.
