---
title: "The stash man is an asshole, or how I use browser bookmarks"
author: "Stan Voo"
url: https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-i-use-browser-bookmarks
published: 2019-11-23
summary: "Most of the links I saved \"to read later\" died in bookmark folders. Now everything sits in one folder, and I find it by typing into Alfred."
---

# The stash man is an asshole, or how I use browser bookmarks

For several years I collected sites in Chrome bookmarks[^1], in "to watch" and "to read" lists. In the end most of the links just died there. In practice, browser bookmarks are good for what they were made for: quick access to pages you open often. Storing links there that you'll have to sort later, let alone links to reference material you may never need, turned out to be impractical. You end up either with a dump of links where nothing can be found, or spending time maintaining a folder hierarchy and searching anyway.

Since then I've switched to macOS, and now I open bookmarks with [Alfred](https://www.alfredapp.com/) search.

Here's how it looks:

![](https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-i-use-browser-bookmarks-1.gif)

The beauty of it is that I no longer have to mess around with bookmark folders. Everything sits in one folder; mine is called "Current". Searching by bookmark folder name works too, though, if you still feel like nerding out:

![](https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-i-use-browser-bookmarks-2.webp)

When Alfred turns up an old bookmark I don't need, I go to chrome://bookmarks/, type in the same query and clear out the junk.

> By the way, the chrome://bookmarks/ page itself is in my bookmarks too, for quick access 👀

Bookmark search doesn't handle word forms, so-called fuzzy search, so when I add a bookmark I now name it the way I suspect I might search for the page in the future. I add synonyms, and a Russian translation if the page title is in English, and vice versa.

To add a new bookmark, I press Cmd+D and type in whatever's needed:

![](https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-i-use-browser-bookmarks-3.gif)

Here's what my browser bookmarks look like now:

![](https://www.99rabbits.com/blog/how-i-use-browser-bookmarks-4.webp)

I switched off the bookmarks bar too. It's now easier to open a page with Alfred than to reach for an icon with the mouse. Besides, the browser window looks cleaner (I often work on the laptop screen, and vertical space is scarce), and it doesn't distract me with calls to feed the dopamine addict on Twitter or Facebook.

With the bar gone, I no longer need to organize and update the links and icons on it. One task fewer.

All in all, I'm happy with Alfred: I have what I need at hand and don't waste time on extras.

[^1]: The title is a pun. In Russian slang a *zakladka*, "bookmark", is also a drug stash hidden for a buyer to pick up, and the *kladmen* is the courier who hides it. "The stash man is an asshole" is what buyers say when they can't find it.