I was recently asked about bookmarks, and I realized my browser/bookmarks workflow might seem a bit odd…

  • My main browser at home is LibreWolf, which is a privacy-focused Firefox fork (kind of what Brave is next to Chrome, but not really). It uses a Searx instance for searches.
  • For work and “We don’t like your VPN” places (like my bank for example, or health insurance) I use Brave. I believe it uses its own search. (I switched to Google, as this is my “boring me, vanilla guy, nothing to see here” kind of deal.)
  • For blogging at home, I use Firefox. It uses DuckDuckGo (the default) for searches
  • For writing (journal and sometimes blogging) I use EWW, which is the Emacs' built-in web browser. It uses Wikipedia as a search engine.

Sometimes I launch a URL directly from KeePassXC. I have a section of pages I visit often, so it’s another way of logging into those with the credentials ready to go.

I do have bookmarks saved where it makes sense. For example, my Brave browser has bookmarks for various bills-paying related sites; but LibreWolf does not have bookmarks I use often, because these are launched from KeePassXC.

Another way I sometimes browse the internet and save pages is with org-mode - but not the way you probably think. I don’t have a “bookmarks.org” somewhere or a file with different URLs. Instead, the links depend on the task or project they’re attached to.

For example, if I want to buy a new hard drive, I will have the task in org-mode and several links in it leading to search results across different sites. Another example is a link to a location, say a museum, I visited on a certain day. This works well because the connection I make mentally makes sense to me; if I want to find the model of the hard drive I purchased, for example, I will look up the task that had to do with it and find it. When I work in org-mode, the links will open in EWW. If I need a full browser (to visit the hard drive link from Amazon), I just need to press “&” to open my external default browser with that link.

Do you have your own weird way of saving locations on the net? Do you even bother? Or do you keep a tidy list in your Safari/Firefox/Chrome?