Bookmarks don’t scale for managing tools
The problem was that my bookmarks were no longer useful.
Not because there wasn’t any good software out there, but simply because I could not find what I needed amongst the mess of saved links that I no longer looked at. It had all become this heap of “maybe helpful in the future” bookmarked pages that would never see the light of day again.
I realized that software differs in nature from other types of content: You do not read it only once but repeatedly. However, it gets stored similarly to texts, i.e., flat and unstructured in a folder full of bookmarks.
Lately, I’ve been trying to think about storing software more like apps: by purpose and with ease of access in mind. The idea is similar to creating your own personalized app layer for the web (like https://unstore.io ).
It is a small change but one that cuts down on research and jumping back-and-forth considerably.
I wonder what others’ approaches are here. Do you still use bookmarks, or have you switched to something else?
That distinction between software and things you read once is useful. A folder works when you already know what you’re looking for, but it falls apart when all you remember is “that tool that cleaned up screenshots.”
Full disclosure: I’m building Nodus Vault around that retrieval problem. It saves the readable page content with the link, so you can search by the idea you remember instead of the original title. A small Daily Check also brings a few forgotten links back into view.
It’s paid after a 7-day trial and it doesn’t create a public app-store-style layer, so it may not match your whole workflow. But for the “I know I saved this somewhere” moment, it might be useful.
When you go looking again, do you usually remember the job the tool did or the project you needed it for?