Hookmark + Linkding

It’s hard to believe that I hadn’t heard of Hookmark until recently. The crowd I follow online doesn’t tend to miss Mac productivity tools, but this one seems to have escaped mass publicity within that community. The premise seems like a powerful one:

Hookmark is the standalone contextual bookmarking app. It complements your launcher by also being the contextual launcher. Hookmark enables you to create and link robust bookmarks to files, emails, tasks and more, making it easy for you to access information without needing to search.

Hookmark came to my attention via the lovely Ellane W, who blogs about her affinity for plain text and the tools supporting a digital lifestyle rich with the simple format.¹ From there I read about the recent integration between Hookmark and linkding at Brett Terpstra’s blog.

Linkding is a more modern take on bookmarking in the style of Pinboard (to which I have a perpetual subscription - but that hasn’t been updated in years). Linkding is self-hosted, and you can spin up a PikaPod for the service for as little as 2 bones a month. I’m tempted to give it a go. I haven’t had any problems with Pinboard, but I’m wary of keeping so many of my treasured bookmarks in a service that doesn’t seem to be very active. Plus, I’ve had such a positive experience with PikaPods from standing up both Ghost and WordPress instances there. As Luc Beaudoin, the Co-founder of CogSci Apps (the creators of Hookmark) notes, “If you self-host Linkding, you maintain full control over your links—with zero dependence on third-party services.” That is a compelling value proposition to a digital packrat like me.

The integration is still developing and CogSci has specific plans for future improvements, such as adding the ability to add a note to a bookmark and sync the note with Linkding. Honestly, this is the kind of relational instumentation I’ve been dreaming about for years.

CogSci is promising a version of Hookmark for iOS in the future.