1

Please recommend a Linux (Debian / Ubuntu / Mint) application to quickly store tens of thousands of web browser bookmarks outside of a web browser. Key requirements:

  1. Able to store at least 100000 URLs and their corresponding site's titles.
  2. Have a mechanism to prevent duplicates.
  3. Store the date each URL/title pair was added.
  4. Some sort of import functionality, even if it is cumborsome.
  5. Open-source.
  6. Gratis or under 20 €/$ for a lifetime license.
  7. Save all data locally.
  8. Fast to load. No big bulky database apps please.
  9. Able to quickly accept clipboard content containing 20+ URL/title pairs. The clipboard content can be adjusted ahead of time to any reasonable format, but ideally will be something simple and obvious like:
Software Recommendations Stack Exchange
https://softwarerecs.stackexchange.com/

Charity Ratings and Donor Resources | Charity Navigator
https://www.charitynavigator.org/

The Rainforest Site | Click to Save The Rainforest
https://theanimalrescuesite.greatergood.com/clickToGive/trs/home

As a bonus, the ability to add a short note for each URL/title pair would be nice, but is not required.

The data needs to be viewable in some fashion. A flat list is fine. A basic text search would be a nice bonus, but not required. More advanced search/filtering is welcome.

Improve this question
2
  • 1
    Do you only need to insert bookmarks? Do you need a feature to actually use (read) that data in any way? If not I recommend /dev/null :-)
    – Nicolas Raoul ♦
    Commented Feb 27 at 8:15
  • @NicolasRaoul Only the URL/title pairs and the date each pair is added need to be stored. Adding a note per URL/title pair would be a bonus, but not required. No other types of data need to be stored. The data needs to be viewable, and a simple text search would be nice, but no hard requirements.
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Feb 27 at 10:27

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
1

This answer might not be satisfactory to you, but perhaps it could be at least somewhat helpful.

I'm not familiar with any software which would meet all of your requirements, but I use a hybrid system (Obsidian + a helper program I wrote myself) for essentially what you are describing (made my own thing since I couldn't find anything that does exactly what I want and need). I don't keep just websites inside my system, but also games, youtube videos, topics, projects, ideas, apps, movies, tasks and anything else (AKA it's a bit more generic). I also have a feature which "features" random items I have inside the system each day (with the ability to adjust how often each one is featured) and few other neat things.

The simple program I wrote allows me to paste stuff from my clipboard to create a note (markdown file) for each object. Each file has a metadata section (creation time and date, type etc.), relations (links (tags) to other objects like artist of a song or a link to the similar object etc.), content (text/stuff about the object, can be empty) and dump (area at the bottom of the file where I can write quick notes about the object). The program also allows me to view all objects of a specific type or all objects added on a specific date and such. I use Obsidian as an editor for the objects (also search and graph view), but you could use any text editor.

Here's the example object (YOUTUBE.md): https://i.sstatic.net/FZftM.png

Here's the example type (WEBSITE.md): https://i.sstatic.net/yi2vW.png

Let me know if you are interested in knowing more. I could even maybe create something similar to what I have for you (for free), since I already created the system for myself and you seem to only need a subset of the features my system offers, as long as you are fine with a very basic CLI app.

Improve this answer
6
  • 1
    This is actually an excellent answer, thank you. I'll follow-up after I perform some more research (I'm not familiar with Obsidian).
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Mar 1 at 21:16
  • I use Obsidian since I explicitly want to have a markdown file for each object (in your case bookmark). You might not even want that. Perhaps you might want a single file which contains all of the bookmarks with the addition of a program for adding new ones (without duplicates) and a few extra features. Also, when you say the data needs to be viewable, do you mean something like viewing all of the bookmarks in a text file, or a GUI app, or would you be fine with a CLI/TUI app which displays the data? Also, what do you mean by import?
    – TypicalHog
    Commented Mar 1 at 21:40
  • 1
    I would prefer 1 file, simply because having 100000 files seems like a lot of overhead. Regarding viewability, definitely GUI, but something simple is fine. Like you mentioned, seeing them all in a single text file in a text editor will be sufficient.
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Mar 1 at 21:51
  • Forgot to mention the fact Obsidian is sadly not open source, but it seems like you might not even need it. Also, when you said "some sort of import functionality", did you mean a way to import the bookmarks from browser bookmarks file, the clipboard, both or something else entirely? And would you want bookmarks divided into different groups/buckets or all in one single place and should they be sorted by creation date, alphabetically, both or some sort of rating/importance value?
    – TypicalHog
    Commented Mar 1 at 22:05
  • I can massage the data to import as needed. Ideally, it would be from a plain text file or a CSV file, but it's just a bit of time to convert to most formats.
    – Amazon Dies In Darkness ♦
    Commented Mar 2 at 0:55

Your Answer

By clicking “Post Your Answer”, you agree to our terms of service and acknowledge you have read our privacy policy.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.