The 11 best bookmark apps

It happens every day—you're in the middle of working on something but get distracted by a notification. Perhaps you got an email from a friend telling you to read this interesting article. Maybe you checked a favorite blog and see a post that catches your attention, or stumbled across a site you know you'll want to check again in the future. There's something to see, but you don't have time to do so right now.

It's easy for good content to vanish into the black hole of the internet. Don't. Bookmark it instead.

Traditional bookmarks save stuff forever—they keep details about a website around so you can reference and revisit them whenever you need. We tested dozens of bookmark apps that create a permanent archive of content you can refer to later. Here are the 11 best.

The best bookmark and archiving apps

What is a bookmarking app?

Bookmark apps organize and store your bookmarks long term. You could use them to read later—and many have a dedicated reading list—but they're best used for content you want to keep forever.

You could just use your browser's built-in bookmarks menu. If you use Chrome or Safari on your phone, your home computer, and your work laptop, those bookmarks will sync each device and you'll always have those bookmarks when you need them.

But what if you use Chrome at work and Safari on your phone? Or what if you want to look up a bookmark from your browser, or need to organize more links than you can easily manage in your bookmarks menu?

That's where bookmarking apps come in. They're archiving tools where you can create a personal, organized, searchable reference library where content retrieval is a piece of cake. They're the tools to help you build your own personal Google.

Pinboard (Web)

For bookmarks and an archive of your favorite sites

Pinboard's design harks back to the earliest web apps, with a text-heavy (and surprisingly fast loading) interface. It's simple and straightforward. Use its bookmaklets and app integrations to bookmark sites, add tags to organize them, and include as much text from the site or your own notes in their description. Add your own notes to save them on their own alongside bookmarks, or mark a link as read later to put it in Pinboard's own reading queue.

Pinboard can then backup your favorite online content. Connect your Twitter, Instapaper, and Pocket accounts to automatically bookmark every link you share and save. Upgrade to an Archival plan, and Pinboard can do the same with your bookmarks, saving a full copy of that website so you can still open it even if the page is taken offline.

It's like a super-powered version of del.icio.us, the popular bookmarking app from around the turn of the century that was recently acquired by Pinboard.

• Pinboard Pricing: $11/year basic account for bookmarking; $25/year Archival account for an archive of every site you bookmark

• See Pinboard's Zapier Integrations to automatically save links from your favorite apps

Google Bookmarks (Web)

For a simple online bookmarks list

Want the very simplest bookmarking app? Just open bookmarks.google.com for a plain text list of bookmarks in your browser.

Google Bookmarks will likely already have some bookmarks even if you've never used it before, as it shows your starred Google Maps locations—and your Google and YouTube search history. You then can add new bookmarks complete with labels and a description, or add its bookmarklet to your Favorites bar to quickly add bookmarks from anywhere. It's just about the most basic bookmarks app you could get.

Google Bookmarks Pricing: Free

Evernote (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web)

For searchable notes you can take anywhere

Evernote is an app that has so many features, it can really be used as your main workspace. You can use Evernote to take notes, manage tasks and projects, share and collaborate with other people, and, of course, to store the content you find on the web for future reference.

Installing the Evernote Web Clipper extension allows you to save an entire page, a stripped-down article, an image, or selected text to your Evernote notebook with a single click. Within Evernote, you can organize your "clips" into different notebooks with tags and comments. Because you're copying the content into your own Evernote account, all the text is fully searchable and will stay in your notebook even if the original website disappears.

What's even more impressive is their "Related Notes" feature: When you search the web, Evernote will show results that are related to your search from your saved notebooks right within the Google Bing search results. It makes sure you can always find what you're looking for.

• Evernote Pricing: Free for 2 devices; from $34.99/year Plus plan for unlimited devices, offline notebooks, and support

• See Evernote's Zapier Integrations to automatically save links from your favorite apps

OneNote (Android, iOS, Windows, Mac, Web)

For including live web content in your notes

OneNote is Microsoft's notes app that feels a bit more like a paper notebook than Evernote. You can click anywhere on your notes and start typing, or pull out a pen and mark up your notes with digital ink.

And, you can save websites. Its OneNote Clipper extension lets you save content from around the web to your OneNote notebooks, which can be organized into sections, pages, subpages, and so on. If there's active content on the page—perhaps an embedded 3D render, PDF document, video, or map—OneNote will show the live content in your notes just like it'd look on the webpage. You can then highlight or annotate your clips, then share entire notebooks with colleagues or turn pages into PDFs that you can send to anyone.

• OneNote Pricing: Free; from $6.99/month with an Office 365 Home subscription

• See OneNote's Zapier Integrations to automatically save links from your favorite apps

Historious (Web)

For simple, powerful search

Historious doesn't have a huge set of features like most bookmarking apps, but it does one thing really, really well: Search.

Historious' homepage is a riff off Google's, even copying the famous "I'm feeling lucky" button. Add content to your Historious account with a bookmarklet or extension. It caches the pages in your library, so you can search the entire contents of an article from your Historious home page. You can then read the cached version of the page or to launch the live link to get the most up-to-date version. Historious even includes tagging for deeper organization.

But for the most part, you'll save links, then use Historious as your first place to search when looking for things. It's your own private Google.

Historious Pricing: Free for saving 50 sites; from $2.97/month for unlimited sites and features

Facebook Save (Android, iOS, Web)

For bookmarking content on Facebook

Facebook has its own reading later or bookmarking app, of sorts. When you're reading through your Facebook feed, click the down-arrow in the top right corner of a post and select "Save Link."

Then, go to facebook.com/saved or find the Saved option in the Facebook app's menu to view your saved links. You can read, watch, and of course, share the content with your friends. They'll stay in your Saved list It's a great option if you find most of your content via the News Feed—or just want an easy way to save a video so you can find it again later.

Facebook Save Pricing: Free

Liner (iOS, Web)

For saving quotes to reference later

Maybe you don't want to remember the whole article later—perhaps you just want to look back at the best parts of it. Liner is the app for you. It's a reading later app built around highlighted text.

Install its Chrome extension, then highlight the things in the page you want to remember. You'll then have a list of both bookmarks and the actual reason you bookmarked the pages.

Liner Pricing: Free; $4.99/month Premium plan for more highlight colors, comments, folders, and priority support

Larder (Android, Web)

For bookmarking code snippets

One of the newer bookmarking apps, Larder is designed to easily keep track of your favorite code snippets online. Star a GitHub repository, and Larder will automatically add it to your bookmark list—and can even notify you when things are changed.

It's great for bookmarking standard sites, too, with its bookmarklet and browser extensions. Then, organize your links with tags—which you can nest in Larder for a hierarchy of tags to make it easy to organize links.

Larder Pricing: $24/year

Pinterest (Android, iOS, Web)

For graphical bookmarks

Don't want a list of text links? Pinterest helps you remember why you bookmarked a site in the first place by putting photos front-and-center. When you bookmark—or pin—a site to your boards, you'll select an image from the page to feature on Pinterest. You can then click on the link in the bottom corner of the image right from your boards to quickly open the original site.

Pinterest is designed to be social, and your boards will be public by default—though you can make them "secret" or private if you'd like. Either way, you can still use Pinterest's search tool to look through things others have pinned to shared boards, as a great tool to discover new things to accompany your research.

• Pinterest Pricing: Free

• See Pinterest's Zapier Integrations to automatically save links from your favorite apps

Raindrop.io (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Web)

For screenshots of your bookmarked sites

Want a more powerful, private Pinterest? Raindrop.io is another bookmarking tool built around images, this time with a tool to take full screenshots of your bookmarked sites. Whenever you add a new site to Raindrop.io, you can tap a button to save a screenshot the site as well. Or, install its browser extensions and drag any photo on the page to the side of your screen to save it directly to your Raindrop.io account.

Then, you can organize your bookmarks in groups, with lists or mood boards of your bookmarks and detailed tags and bookmark categories to find all related bookmarks in seconds.

Raindrop.io Pricing: Free; $2/month for 1GB uploads, Dropbox backup, and nested collections

Dropmark (Web, Mac, Chrome)

For team visual bookmarking

Bookmarks aren't just for your own reference—sometimes they're part of a bigger project that you're working on with a team. Dropmark is built for that. Bookmark your favorite sites—and add text notes, images, audio, or other files to share, too—then organize them into collections. Keep your personal stuff in a private collection, then invite your team to the collections you want to share with them.

You can then make a quick presentation from your shared bookmarks, add new bookmarks from Slack, and use it as a quick way to share files and more with your team. And, at the same time, you're building up an archive of bookmarks to reference whenever you need them.

Dropmark Pricing: Free personal edition; $5/month per user Team plan for shared bookmarks

Picking the Best Bookmarking App for You

Think about how you like to save links and read online content, then try out a few of the apps that seem like they fit that style the best. Then import your bookmarks and use them to save everything you come across online for the next few weeks. Odds are you'll quickly find the perfect way to archive your favorite online content.

Or, if you want a way to follow your favorite websites and keep up with everything they publish, try an RSS feed reader app.

Check out our roundup of the best RSS apps to find the perfect way to keep up with your favorite sites.