The internet is full of cool websites and some of them are so interesting and useful that it’s no wonder people want to save them for posterity. Bookmark managers, note-taking apps, and read-later services like Pocket are great for collecting and organizing links. But the fact is that there are too many links on too many platforms and apps to keep track of.
A former Twitter engineer, Joe Fabisevich, has developed an app called Plinky that aims to tackle this problem with a new approach that emphasizes customization.
Available for iPhones, iPads and Apple Silicon Macs, Plinky lets you save links to websites, apps, videos, images and even app stores, label them neatly and organize them into different folders. You can customize these labels, folders, and even control how a link appears in the app. Additionally, you can search for and pin links for easier access.
You can easily favorite the app in the share menu to quickly share a link from anywhere – browsers, other apps, messengers. It’s easy to save a link with just a few taps, and I also liked the save animation.
Fabisevich told TechCrunch that he was inspired to create the app because he sent his fiancée tons of links — tweets, articles, videos and memes. Although she liked the gesture, she found it distracting and asked him to save some of them for later. It was at this point that Fabisevich began working on Plinky.
The founder believes that the ethos of a link storage app should be to simplify the process. He noted that apps like Pocket and Instapaper are great for reading, but links often contain videos and photos and these apps may not be suitable for multimedia consumption.
Fabisevich has also developed extensions for Chrome, Safari and Firefox, as well as integrations with RSS reader Unread, iOS Shortcuts and Zapier. There is also an open API that third-party developers can use to build integration for more interfaces.
The free version allows you to save up to 50 links and create up to five labels and three folders. To remove these restrictions, you can pay $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Or you can purchase lifetime access for $159.99.
As far as features go, Plinky falls short compared to Raindrop, a popular bookmarking app that also offers Android, Mac (Intel), and Windows apps. Raindrop offers more integrations and in the free tier you can save as many links and bookmarks as you want. However, Raindrop doesn’t work well with YouTube and App Store links because they open through the in-app browser instead of redirecting you to the native app – an issue that Plinky solves better.
Plinky offers a much better solution than saving links through a browser’s bookmark manager, as it’s easier to organize links in the app with folders and labels.
Fabisevich said he used Raindrop but wanted to create a solution that everyone could use. “In their own words, Raindrop is ‘designed for creatives, built for programmers,'” he said. “While I love that, since it’s both, that’s a very small portion of people who would benefit from a universal inbox for their links.”
“From the first time you save a link in Plinky, you can see that the app is doing its job and getting out of the way. It’s a different approach than Raindrop, where you have to think about categorization from the start.”
What’s next for Plinky?
In the coming months, Fabisevich wants to develop better organization and customization features for the app.
He wants to make it easier for people to import links from existing services like Goodlinks, Raindrop and Pocket, where they may already have a library of bookmarks and snippets.
The founder also wants to add secure folders for storing sensitive links, an in-app reading experience, and the ability to add reminders for links you might want to read later. He also wants to develop a native Mac app, since the current one is just an iPad app that is only compatible with macOS devices running on Apple’s own chips.
I liked that the app’s support section includes a list of upcoming features for users to vote on. The features with the most votes are created first.
In the long term, Fabisevich wants to build more personalized workflows for saving and prioritizing links, as well as a better search experience.