Raindrop.IO – The solution for browser bookmarks

Have you ever put any thoughts in organizing your browser bookmarks? I guess you didn’t – neither did I. Bookmarks were always a feature, that were kind of there, but I never used them – although, they are very handy in many situations. And that was because of one reason: accessibility.

I used to use Chrome as my main browser across all devices back then – except the iPhone and iPad. In my opinion, Safari is just best option there. But that led to a problem, when it comes to synchronising bookmarks: it’s not possible, at least not with little effort. Since being tied to one browser everywhere was not an option for me, I started searching for a different solution.

First of all, due to laziness, I was just using Google Keep to paste the link there, but after some time, I realised, that this just resulted in a great mess – definitely not the way to go.

So I put some thoughts in the topic again, and the first thing that was coming to my mind again was trying to synchronise Chromes bookmarks across all my devices – maybe something had changed in the meantime. Of course, it didn’t.
But then I started wondering: if browsers have implemented a bookmark-feature, that syncs all your saved pages with your iCloud, Google or whatever account – is there no third party extension, that does exactly the same thing?

This extension needed to fulfil the following needs:

  • It had to be available in all common browsers such as Chrome, Safari, Firefox and Microsofts Edge Chromium.
  • There was the need for a mobile solution, which must not be tied to a own browser or something.
  • It needed to store a large amount of bookmarks in an organised, searchable way.
  • I did not want any preview-features, just a simple link I can click on.

The first tools I came across were Instapaper and Pocket. I actually used Pocket in the past, but it turned out to be not the right choice for me, since it always tried to display the site in its own reader first, what was not, what I was looking for. Instapaper seemed very similar, so did not even give it a try.

After some research I stumbled upon a tool named “Raindrop.IO” and – spoiler alert – it turned out to be the perfect solution for the problem!

Raindrop.IO is very simple: its just a browser extension, where you can choose if you want just a little “Save this site”-dialoge or the overview of all bookmarks. Bookmarks can be organised in folders (called “collections”), but you can give them labels as well, to have a second grouping-possibility.

When you store a bookmark, it automatically gets the sites title and meta-description, which – of course – can be changed. Those attributes make the sites easily searchable.

All of that can be accessed via the already mentioned browser extension, the mobile app (available for iOS and Android) or a web app. For the Mac, there is also a standalone app.

As you can tell, I’m pretty impressed by the tool and love to use it (they did not sponsor me btw :D).

The best thing is: Raidrop.IO is completely free for basic use. However, for those of you who want the search and nested collections, there is also a pro version for around 30 $ a year, what seems like a fair price to me, when you see it on a monthly basis.

You can get Raindrop.IO here: https://raindrop.io

Filed under: Software - @ May 5, 2021 10:48 pm