For many years I have a task in my task manager called „sort bookmarks and find a new system“. I didn’t do it yet, partly because it actually isn’t too much of a pain point, it didn’t have too much priority. But I would like to approach that now. The thing is, I don’t need a professional solution or something complicated to manage huge amounts of research or whatever.
Probably 90% of my Safari bookmarks are about ten years old, I almost quit using them at all. On my iPhone I have dozens of open tabs, some of which I visit regularly and I look for them between the rest, annoyed. I actually did establish a tab group for those regularly used sites, but I found that after a while it contained seldom used sites, while the often used sites involuntarily jumped over to the „general“ tab group. I guess that’s because it’s kind of the „working“ one. When within the other, curated, group, I must not open tabs that are not within this definition, so there’s a resistance to using that group, leading to the paradox I described above.
I have all those tabs open that actually fall in different categories. Stuff that would belong in a „read later“ system. Stuff I know I should read (e.g. because someone I know wrote it but I am actually not super interested), so I just keep it open for the moment. Stuff like a web-comic I started, yes I would like to continue some time but right now my interests jumped to something else. Stuff that I really want to save for a project and that should be stored securely. Those sites I visit every day. Tabs I opened while looking for a product that will be closed soon, once I purchased.
The phone is actually the place that established itself as the database for those tabs. As long as I have it open there, it won’t get lost. So on iPad or Mac I tend to close those tabs more freely. When opening a site I usually rely on the start page of Safari or the auto-fill.
But I am annoyed by this!! How do others manage this? I could try to start making actual use of bookmarks. I could try to start using the read it later list. I could make more use of Pocket (which I use for one specific use case). I could try to make better use of tab groups. But I know all of this will only get established if there is little friction. If it takes too much steps or is too complicated, it just won’t stick.
I dream of a system where I close all tabs every time I close Safari and where I get a nice starting page that suggests my needs whenever I open it. But I’m afraid that is not realistic.
Here is an image of my Bookmark Bar.
Social is self explanatory
Mine is Links to Apple, Google, MS account links and other services I frequently use.
Australia are all links relating to living in Aus. E.g. Electricity, Government, Banking, etc.
Forums is this forum and 2 AU specific.
News are all websites I visit semi frequently.
Reddit stores all the individual sub-reddits I frequent. /r/macapps
Football is the one played in Europe. Contains all websites with URL on this subject. The Athletic - Sports news, stories, scores, schedules, podcasts, and more
Cricket yes the sport
F1 yes the sport
Sport this contains links to sports I follow semi regularly
Streaming all the links to streaming websites.
Internet contains Cheap Charts, light Pollution map and other random links that I might need to check one day.
Travel contains all links I will need to make a trip overseas.
Hobbies contains Hiking, FIFA and other hobbies that I have.
Work contains links that might be interesting to grow me professionally.
All RIL links go to Goodlinks and get sorted there.
Hope this helped.
Maybe it’s not impossible after all. I started sorting my bookmarks, generously creating an “archive” folder to get rid of old stuff I dare not delete. I figure it is possible to create a really good custom start page this way, that can be a launcher for pages I frequently visit. I can add pages to either bookmarks (in folders for less frequented sites) or reading list, if I really think they shouldn’t be simply closed. A lot probably doesn’t need either, I won’t forget the name of Amazon or my preferred news site. I have to do more cleaning up, but I might actually start a “one tab policy” soon.
I have a set of hand-made static HTML pages residing on my hard drive and on DropBox.
It’s essentially a local Website.
Frequently used sites are in the Favorites bar, some in folders, i.e. Libraries, Pending folder for bookmarks for the current writing. Actual bookmarks are in categorized folders.
It’s not a starting page but how about using the Safari command Bookmarks/Add Open Tabs to Reading List?
The File/Export/Bookmarks command will save your Reading List as well as your Bookmarks to an html page.