Self-Hosting My Bookmark Manager: Syncing Everywhere Without an Account

We all have our favorite browsers—whether it’s Safari, Chrome, Opera GX, or others. However, managing bookmarks across different browsers can turn into a chaotic mess. Add in my Safari reading list and Pinterest boards, and my collection of interesting links becomes scattered everywhere. I needed a better way to organize my bookmarks in one place, and I had a couple of key requirements: I didn’t want to pay for it, and I wanted to have full control over my data instead of depending on third-party servers.

This led me to the option of self-hosting a bookmark manager. After exploring various choices, I decided on Shiori. First off, I love the name—it resonates with my personal interests. More importantly, Shiori offers a unique organization system that’s different from the standard folder setups most apps provide.

With Shiori, I Control My Data

Shiori runs through Docker, meaning it’s all on my own hardware. I’m not relying on any third-party infrastructures, so if I ever lose access to my bookmarks, I know it’s an issue with my setup, not someone else’s servers. What’s more, my bookmarks remain completely private—there are no services scanning my data to build advertisements. I do have an account, but it’s just a simple username and password that keeps my bookmarks safe from unauthorized access.

A Cleaner Tagging System Than Folders

As someone who often uses Obsidian (a popular note-taking app), I’ve grown to love tags for organizing information. Shiori draws from this method, allowing me to tag each bookmark with multiple labels. This makes searching for specific links a breeze. For example, if I search for tag:recipe, I get a list of all saved recipe links. If I want to narrow it down further, I can search using both tag:recipe and tag:egg to find all egg-based recipes.

Of course, the tagging system isn’t without its quirks. The search function has a few oddities, like not allowing spaces between tag: and the keyword. You also have to input tags without commas, like tag:item1 tag:item2, to refine your searches. However, the overall organization makes up for these little frustrations.

Minimal Customization Needed

One of the best things about Shiori is that it’s nearly perfect straight out of the box. While setting it up might seem daunting for some, it’s actually fairly straightforward. Once installed, you can start using it with minimal fuss. The only real technical hurdle is safely sharing it with other services, but I found that using Tailscale works quite well.

Challenges with Adding New Bookmarks

Adding new bookmarks can be cumbersome. Shiori doesn’t have a robust mobile solution, and currently, it only offers a browser extension for Firefox, with a Chrome extension that didn’t work well for me. To simplify the process, I even wrote a little bookmarklet to save links directly to Shiori.

javascript
javascript:(function(){
const u = encodeURIComponent(location.href);
const t = encodeURIComponent(document.title);
location.href = ‘https://www.google.com/url?q=%27 + encodeURIComponent(%27http://YOUR_SHIORI_LOCATION/bookmarks/new?url=%27+u+%27&title=%27+t);
})();

For mobile access, there are some third-party apps available for Android and iOS, but going directly through the browser can be a hassle. The good news is that Shiori is under active development, so many of these issues may soon be fixed.

Small Code Work for Big Benefits

It may seem like a minor inconvenience to write a small script to save bookmarks, but it gives me control over my data. The abundance of online documentation makes getting Shiori up and running quite easy. Yes, there are some hurdles while adding bookmarks without going through Shiori’s interface, but I believe it’s worth it for the control and privacy I gain.

Rediscovering My Bookmarks

Before I started using Shiori, I rarely touched my bookmarks outside of the ones I kept on my browser’s bookmark bar. Anything interesting I’d found was often forgotten. Now, with everything organized in Shiori, I find myself exploring previously saved articles and rediscovering websites I had almost completely overlooked. Plus, Shiori attempts to keep a semi-permanent version of the content so I can still access it even if the original site goes offline.

In a world where data privacy is becoming increasingly important, self-hosting my bookmark manager has been a game changer. I highly recommend exploring this route if you’re tired of your bookmarks being scattered everywhere.

Hashtags

BookmarkManager #SelfHosted #Shiori #DataControl #PrivacyMatters #InternetBookmarks #TechForEveryone #DigitalOrganization

Original Text – https://www.xda-developers.com/i-self-hosted-my-own-bookmark-manager-and-it-syncs-everywhere-without-an-account/