My personal bookmarking setup
How I use Raindrop.io for bookmarking
Plus: What App Store changes mean for you, a better internet speed checker, and how to tell if a website is safe
Jared Newman | 
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I recently ran a survey for Advisorator’s paid subscribers, and one request that came up was for some deeper dives into the software I regularly rely on.
So allow me to dedicate this week’s column to Raindrop.io, which I’ve been using to bookmark web pages since 2020. I’ve tried lots of other bookmarking apps over the years, but none of them work as well for me as Raindrop.
Because I’m constantly bookmarking articles to reference in my newsletters—I’ve saved more than 5,000 of them over the years—Raindrop is easily one of my top-five most used apps. I’ve written about it before, but here’s a closer look at how I’m using it:
Why I (still) love Raindrop.io
- It’s browser-independent: Web browsers have their own bookmarking features, but Raindrop.io is a separate app. That means I can switch browsers without importing my bookmarks every time. (I only use my browser’s bookmarks bar for bookmarklets.)
- It works everywhere: Raindrop is available on the web, Windows, Mac, iOS, and Android, so my bookmarks aren’t locked down to any one computing platform.
- Easy sharing: Raindrop supports the Share menu on iOS and Android, so you can quickly save links from any app, and it offers a browser extension to quickly save your whatever page you’re looking at.
- There’s a robust free tier: Raindrop’s free version has no limits on how many bookmarks you can save, so you never feel penalized for using it. (The $3 per month “Pro” plan adds features like annotated highlights, offline archives, and AI organization.)
What I’ve come to appreciate more than any individual feature, though, is how respectful Raindrop is. You open the app, it immediately loads your last-viewed bookmark folder, and you can toggle between folders with one click. There are no extraneous menus to wade through and no ads or pop-ups that get in the way of using the software. It’s just a dependable, single-purpose app that has worked the same way for years. Sadly that feels rare in today’s software world.
What I save to Raindrop.io
Raindrop lets you organize bookmarks into different “Collections,” which are essentially just folders. That allows me to easily distinguish between bookmarks for different tasks:
- Links for the newsletter: I keep separate bookmark collections for Advisorator and Cord Cutter Weekly, and I’ll save links of interest to these folders as I come across them. When I’m putting together each newsletter, these folders become a kind of to-do list for what to write about.
- Recipes: Yes, there are lots dedicated recipe apps like Mela and Paprika with fancy features like grocery management and meal planning. Usually I just need a reminder of the ingredients, and a basic bookmarking app is fine for that.
- Things to do: I have a “Dining Out” collection for the restaurants I’d otherwise forget to check out and an “Entertainment” collection for games, movies, and other media worth remembering.
One little touch I love about Raindrop: You can assign icons to each Collection, including ready-made options and custom images (like my Advisorator icon). This adds a nice personal touch but also serves as a quick visual aid when switching between folders.
How I save links
While Raindrop’s app has an “Add” button for manually pasting links into your Collections, there are much easier ways to create new bookmarks:
- Raindrop’s browser extension adds a button to your browser’s menu bar, which you can click to bookmark the current page.
- If you’d rather not install an extension (or your work machine precludes you from doing so), Raindrop offers a bookmarklet to click on from your browser’s bookmarks bar. Installation instructions are at the bottom of this page.
- If you’ve installed Raindrop’s mobile app, your phone’s share menu can save links from all kinds of apps, including web browsers, social networking apps, and RSS readers. Just look for the Raindrop icon in the share menu.
After saving a link with the extension or your phone’s share button, you’ll see a menu with some extra options, including the Category picker. I always categorize links immediately after saving them, otherwise they end up in an “Uncategorized” folder that I tend to neglect.
Looking up bookmarks
While Raindrop has dedicated desktop and mobile apps, the main way I access my bookmarks is through a sidebar in my web browser.
With the sidebar, your bookmarks appear in a list view next to whatever web page you’re looking at. Clicking a bookmark will load the page directly in the sidebar, but you can also hover over any bookmark to copy the link address, delete the bookmark, or open it in a new browser tab.
To use the sidebar, install Raindrop’s browser extension, then hit Ctrl + . (in Windows) or Cmd + . (on a Mac). You can also right-click Raindrop’s extension icon and select “Open Sidebar.” (Note that this sidebar view is not available in Safari.)
Some browsers, such as Vivaldi and Edge, also have side panels for viewing any site next to your main browsing window. In that case, you can set up a side panel for app.raindrop.io instead of using Raindrop’s browser extension.
Extra tidbits
While Raindrop is great for basic bookmarking, I’ve used a few additional features on occasion:
- Notes: Click a bookmark and hit the “Edit” button on the top. Here you’ll see a “Note” field where you can add extra info, like recipe modifications or the reason you saved the bookmark.
- Tags: From the same “Edit” menu, you can also apply tags that appear in Raindrop’s sidebar menu. I’ve started using this to quickly find the recipes I use most often.
- Files: Next to the Add button, hit the down arrow to upload files along with your bookmarks. I store images of the occasional printed recipe this way, but note that the free plan has a monthly upload limit of 100 MB.
- Highlights: With Raindrop’s browser extension installed, right-click on a block of selected text, then click “Save highlights.” You’ll see that snippet in your bookmark list, and it’ll be highlighted when you revisit the page.
Admittedly, I ignored most of these features for years after I started using Raindrop, but that just underscores what makes the app great. The bells and whistles are there if you want them, but they’re also easy to avoid if you just want a simple bookmarking tool that works anywhere. If Raindrop doesn’t lose sight of that, I could be using it another five years from now.
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Until next week,
Jared
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