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Raindrop: All-in-One Bookmark Manager(raindrop.io)

198 points·by memorable·4 yıl önce·78 comments
raindrop.io
Raindrop: All-in-One Bookmark Manager

https://raindrop.io/

79 comments

joe8756438·4 yıl önce
For me collecting bookmarks is part of a larger activity that involves any information I want to gather for use later on. Bookmarks is usually about assembling a reading list or collecting resources on a topic. I used to think the larger activity was note-taking, but I'm realizing that's not really it either. The activity is something very general like "collecting information". Collecting, notes, bookmarks, quotes, transactions, events, equations, etc.

I built a service to solve this problem [0], but I'm not sure how to communicate what it is. Does it collect and organize bookmarks, yes. But I also use it to track of my spending, do my budget, keep a work log, make financial projections, manage tasks, send myself reminders and digests of all the above content.

[0] https://tatatap.com
veg·4 yıl önce
I clicked the link because I want something like what you mentioned. But your landing page showed a programming language and you lost me.

And I'm a developer.

You're not selling a syntax. You're selling a solution. The homepage should be selling me on what you're solving, not the syntax to do it.
vorpalhex·4 yıl önce
This is something approaching a general personal assistant. A few notes:

My immediate worry is that this is not general enough. A tool like this is one I really want to integrate into my other tools - Obsidian, PushOver, etc.

Pricing was an immediate turnoff for me. The demo auto-converts and I don't trust you enough to go for that.

It seems like my data is very locked in. Again, not enough trust here.
sph·4 yıl önce
Your comment reminds me of the "Collections" feature in Microsoft Edge, where you can collect a group of related URLs and notes together. I haven't used Edge in a while, but I recall I used it a few times and it was a better experience than the regular "bookmark something and forget about it until it bit rots" which I've never been fond of.

Now I wonder, can I have "Collections" on Firefox?
charles_f·4 yıl önce
I used it for a year until maybe 12 months ago. The one thing that made me leave was that everything was juat slow enough to irritate me. Not crazy slow, but not very responsive either. When looking for a bookmark in a folder and each folder takes a couple seconds to load, then your browse becomes tedious.

I like that there's a good export function though, being able to be non committal to a tool is a prime feature IMO
artdigital·4 yıl önce
That's the reason why I stopped using it too. It looked pretty but I didn't feel productive because of the laggy-ness

I shilled this yesterday as well, but anybox (https://anybox.cc) might be for you, that's what I am using currently. It's native on iOS/Mac, syncs with iCloud and is very keyboard centric with Command Palette, Quick Open, etc.

No connected cloud SaaS subscription service (though there is an iAP with one-time purchase option) or other bells&whistles, just a good simple native app that does what I want it to do
isuleman·4 yıl önce
I don't trust anything with CC domain :{
medstrom·4 yıl önce
Why? Is it mismanaged? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.cc

> The .cc domain is preferred by many cricket and cycling clubs, as well as churches and Christian organizations, since "CC" can be an abbreviation for "Christian Church" or "Catholic Church". Some open-source/open-hardware projects, such as the Arduino project, use a .cc for their home pages, since "CC" is also the abbreviation for "Creative Commons", whose licenses are used in the projects.
lf-non·4 yıl önce
Have been using raindrop for a couple months. Maybe it varies by collection size or location, but I rarely experience a request that takes more than a sec to complete.
hexo·4 yıl önce
Thats still two orders longer than it should take
travoltaj·4 yıl önce
It should take 10 milliseconds?
SAI_Peregrinus·4 yıl önce
Most things should complete in 16ms or less. Preferably less, some people have monitors with faster refresh rates than that.
molyss·4 yıl önce
Who cares about screen refresh rate? It’s not a FPS, if’s a webservice for bookmarking. If they can stay under 100ms, everyone would be fine. 16ms is starting to flirt with the limitations of your eye, without even taking into account info processing
lostdog·4 yıl önce
10ms to look at the bookmarks in a folder sounds slow to me. Are you querying network for the folder contents every time you open every folder?
rnmp·4 yıl önce
Shameless plug but I’m working on a visual organization and bookmarking tool and feedback and input from someone like you would be crucial!

https://www.bleep.is
myth_drannon·4 yıl önce
I also stopped because the extension was slow and unusable if you have a lot of tags
rg111·4 yıl önce
I used Notion for some months, and this is why I stopped using it. It is too slow.

Edit: Notion has no one-click exit options. That's also a bummer.
charles_f·4 yıl önce
Funny you should say that, I had the same experience, and when talking about that with a friend he told me that he never had any speed issues.
exentrich·4 yıl önce
Raindrop servers located in Germany. Response time can be a slow if you too far away geographically. But we use caching intensively so it should not be a problem. Can you check again please?
amitgupta6·4 yıl önce
Yes. It is slow. This is precisely the reason I stopped using it.
markstos·4 yıl önce
Looks nice. Bookmarked it with Pinboard.
seltzered_·4 yıl önce
I used my pinboard account to remember kippt (YC S12, closed 2015) - https://blog.ycombinator.com/kippt-yc-s12-launches-inc-the-w...
eknkc·4 yıl önce
Is pinboard still a thing? I've an account but haven't used it for ages. Maciej seems to have left twitter, http://blog.pinboard.in resolves to a placeholder page. Thought it was abandoned at this point.
tptacek·4 yıl önce
He didn't "seem to have" left Twitter. He announced he was leaving Twitter for a year, about 6 months ago. It's literally the first tweet on his feed. blog.pinboard.in resolves to the Pinboard blog. Pinboard works great; I use it daily.
Tomte·4 yıl önce
Pinboard works great for some. For others it doesn't work at all, and, unlike you, we mere mortals don't have Maciej's cell number. :-)

The most grating part is where he ignores support mails, Twitter DMs etc. completely, over many, many months, but drops in on HN to talk about Pinboard, still ignoring you in that very thread.

Really, this hasn't been going on for six months or so, this has been this way for years and years.

I've recently read on HN that it depends on which server your user account is located on, so I guess we can both be correct. Just open accounts until it works for you. :-)
tptacek·4 yıl önce
I don't know about anyone else's Pinboard experience and am not denying anyone's experience, but I use it pretty much every day (I'm surprised by how often I use it) and I've never had a support request. Wait, that's not true, I once asked him to change the way tweet indexing worked, and he ignored me. But other than that: nothing.
eknkc·4 yıl önce
Yeah I did not check his first tweet, I just don't see his tweets on my feed so I assumed he left. I've always loved his writing style and humor so his absence was obvious.

Blog still loads a "Ubuntu Apache hey you managed to install this" page for me. (https://link.ekin.dev/scKR1f) Don't know why.

Glad that it's still alive and kicking though.
tptacek·4 yıl önce
You've somehow hit the http:// version of blog.pinboard.in. Chrome won't let me get to that page, but Safari will. The URL is https://blog.pinboard.in.
gexla·4 yıl önce
Apparently it is, because Pinboard has taken over my search results for certain queries.
markstos·4 yıl önce
Still a thing. There's an excellent iOS app for Pinboard made a third party developer, called Pins. It was just updated in 2022.

https://get-pins.app/posts/pins-v2022.1/

I don't see a placeholder page at https://blog.pinboard.in/ I see the most recent blog post. It happens to be a couple years old, but Pinboard is good enough as it is. I didn't subscribe for monthly product blog posts.
sph·4 yıl önce
Why the heck are there no screenshots on that site? Not even in the home page?

I do not understand how many developers forget that the easiest way of converting potential buyers is showing a picture of your GRAPHICAL user interface. One of the best sales boost vs time investment you could ever do for your app, takes literally 15 seconds to do.

Sorry, I'm not interested enough to go chasing an App Store link (there's none) or if you shared one in a blog post.
gammarator·4 yıl önce
Man, I love his writing.

> It helped in this process that I was in Japan, since I could do most work at night while my US/European customers slept or wept into their phones or whatever it is people do at night nowadays.
geeio·4 yıl önce
I wasn’t expecting the app to be that good! Great recommendation
foxbarrington·4 yıl önce
Thanks for the recommendation; just purchased Pins. I was using Pinner, but was not happy with it.
password4321·4 yıl önce
Mentioned several times in yesterday's discussion of bookmarking services:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31848210#31856598
ecliptik·4 yıl önce
The NewsBlur RSS reader just added support for Raindrop.io, allowing you you to share a feed item and have it saved in Raindrop with categories and tags.

https://forum.newsblur.com/t/feature-request-support-for-rai...
lf-non·4 yıl önce
If you use RSS it may also appeal to you that Raindrop supports creating public RSS feeds from collections.
NylaTheWolf·4 yıl önce
I noticed that! I was so surprised but so happy!
vorpalhex·4 yıl önce
This is fantastic.

Open source apps? Check

Reasonable ways to get my data out? Check

Sane pricing with sufficient demo? Check

This app is going to be my go to example for how to sell an app well.
oshout·4 yıl önce
Raindrop snapshots and indexes most things you bookmark with it. It also has an API and integrations with ITTT.

There are desktop and mobile apps as well.

I used to live by chromes syncing bookmark feature but it wasn't always easy to get content bookmarked in chrome on my phone especially.

Now, anything which can be shared on my phone (with the share button) I can send to bookmark and be done with it.

My biggest gripe is that the search is direct and doesn't provide much wiggle room in finding what you're looking for. Super handy though if you can remember a key phrase from the article.
exentrich·4 yıl önce
Hi! I’m the creator of Raindrop. Feel free to ask anything!
arintoker·4 yıl önce
This is a great bookmark manager. I have used many other solutions in the past and Raindrop provides the proper functionality you would expect from a bookmark manager after years of use I have never ran into any limitations or frustrations.
simscitizen·4 yıl önce
I use Raindrop but really wish they had support for share extensions in their macOS app. That way I could get rid of their toolbar button and just use the share button instead on Safari.
exentrich·4 yıl önce
Native macOS app is on the way! Hope to complete it this year
[deleted]·4 yıl önce
holgersindbaek·4 yıl önce
Love it. My favorite bookmark manager.
oweiler·4 yıl önce
For me it's much more effective to bookmark blog posts I've found interesting to re-read later than to Store things I may eventually read (which rarely happens).
TenJack·4 yıl önce
Worth checking out Bookmark OS as well for a bookmark manager https://bookmarkos.com
juchilov·4 yıl önce
Scrapyard, a WebExtension ScrapBook revival: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/scrapyard/
janandonly·4 yıl önce
I largely stopped bookmarking stuff altogether, and now simply save a website as a PDF file in a folder structure that is ordered by broad subjects.

Works fine for over a decade now.

Bonus: on MacOS you can search through stored pdf files very easily.
pacifika·4 yıl önce
What about on mobile? Never mind I remembered https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/pdf-search/id1303227688
stereoradonc·4 yıl önce
Raindrop offers best in class bookmarking. 1) Highlights on webpages. 2) IFTTT integration. 3) Permanent archives for paid users. 4) RSS feeds for bookmark collection. Brilliant and HIGHLY recommended!
drcongo·4 yıl önce
I'd be down with this if it used the OS sync (iCloud / Google Drive etc) and wasn't a subscription. As it stands, it looks like it charges monthly just to use a sync that I can't trust.
leodriesch·4 yıl önce
I am using Raindrop and it syncs seamlessly between all my devices despite not ever paying for it.
Melatonic·4 yıl önce
Free tier?
exentrich·4 yıl önce
You can sync with as many devices you want. No such limitation even in Free. You can also connect sync to any other service through IFTTT for free.

But yes backup to Dropbox & Google Drive is premium feature.
MrBurrito·4 yıl önce
Any chance to add OneDrive in the future?
exentrich·4 yıl önce
Absolutely. Will be available in next month
DaniDaniel5005·4 yıl önce
I’m working on one:

https://github.com/Daniel31x13/link-warden
account-5·4 yıl önce
I just use Zotero for bookmarks. No need to worry about deadlinks (seemingly charged for in this app) as a copy it taken at time of ingestion.
aor215·4 yıl önce
I made my own little solution to this problem too: https://linksort.com
mikercampbell·4 yıl önce
I love this! Do you have some sort of mobile, PWA app?
aor215·4 yıl önce
Thanks! On mobile, I just open the page in the browser. There's a Safari extension that works on mobile for iOS that enables you to save links [0]. I haven't bothered to get the Chrome extension to work on mobile yet.

[0] https://linksort.com/blog/safari/
sumitgt·4 yıl önce
Is there a way to export data in some viable format?
ecliptik·4 yıl önce
There is a Backup feature [1] that saves/exports to a Netscape bookmark format file locally or to Dropbox or Google Drive.

I save to Dropbox, and have a cronjob import it into ArchiveBox to create a local backup of sites [2].

1. https://help.raindrop.io/backups/

2. https://www.ecliptik.com/bookmarking-with-raindrop/#archivin...
vorpalhex·4 yıl önce
Thank you, my first question was "How do I hook this up to ArchiveBox."
exentrich·4 yıl önce
Export available in HTML and CSV format. What other format you interested in?
encryptluks2·4 yıl önce
Please open source this and then add features like Google Drive/Dropbox backup, etc. as enterprise.
ecliptik·4 yıl önce
Raindrop web, mobile, and desktop apps are on Github [1], none of the repos have licenses though. It has support for Dropbox and Google Drive backups [2].

1. https://github.com/raindropio

2. https://help.raindrop.io/backups#automatic
tconfrey·4 yıl önce
BrainTool[1] is a similar bookmarking extension that is open source[2] and syncs data to a plain text file (org-mode format) on Google Drive.

[1] https://braintool.org [2] https://github.com/tconfrey/BrainTool
encryptluks2·4 yıl önce
Looks very nifty. This is definitely more in line with what I was looking for.
ilrwbwrkhv·4 yıl önce
Is this inspired by inkdrop.app?
exentrich·4 yıl önce
Raindrop in development since 2013. So probably not :)
needz·4 yıl önce
That landing page is fantastic
smudgy·4 yıl önce
Hmmm... this is interesting!
mkka·4 yıl önce
Just use the notion clipper instead. Used this before but didn't provide much improvement on other solutions.
Gualdrapo·4 yıl önce
You're comparing apples to oranges. Raindrop doesn't need to be installed (on desktop, different thing if you want to use their app on mobile). And it lets you categorize your stuff in folders _and_ tags and give each of them a representative icon. I've using this as a complement to the 'Saved' feature of Feedly and frankly despite the web ui being a little clunky it works really great.
mkka·4 yıl önce
All those are simple to set up in Notion. Both run via web app and can include categories, tags and additional information. They certainly target different audiences, but in my experience Notion isn't missing anything Raindrop has, it just adds more functionality. Raindrop works well, no doubt. It just doesn't add much functionality to browser based bookmarking.
ishbasho·4 yıl önce
I don't see the appeal of the bookmark manager either. I use Joplin's webclipper with tags and reference manager (Zotero) for academic work.