I’ve been using browser bookmarks for years.
I have hundreds of them. Nested folders, random names, half-forgotten links. And every time I try to find something, I end up opening the bookmark manager and breaking my flow.
I tried bookmark extensions. Most of them either solve a completely different problem, or just add more complexity.
So I stopped and asked a simple question:
What do I actually want from a bookmark?
The answer turned out to be stupidly simple:
- I want to quickly save a link, with whatever context I care about
- I want to find it later using whatever I remember in the moment
- I want all of this without leaving the current page
- And I want my data to be portable, not locked into one tool
That’s it.
So I built Recol.
It’s a tiny extension that lets me save and search bookmarks directly from an overlay just like spotlight, without breaking my flow. No folder digging, no context switching, just quick capture and quick retrieval.
I've been using it daily for the past two months, and it finally feels like bookmarks are working with me instead of against me.
If you live in your browser and keyboard like I do, you might find it useful too.
Or not. It solves my problem anyway, and that's enough for me 🙂.