Bemarked (bmkd)

Your private bookmark manager that works simply and easily for you.

About this project

Bemarked (short name bmkd / bookmarks daemon) is a lightweight, self-hosted, private bookmark manager: a single binary with built-in web-server, web UI and human-readable plain-text (TSV) storage format. No cloud, no accounts.

Short story

I’ve wanted to bring this project to life for a long time. In real-world use, when you frequently switch between different browsers and devices, bookmarks eventually get scattered around. On top of that, you need synchronization, quick access, straightforward backups, self-hosting/privacy options, and so on.

I looked into existing bookmark managers, ranging from feature-rich tools to minimalist ones. The comprehensive solutions solved the core problem, but were heavily bloated with extra features: setup required a dedicated server or Docker, and everything was stored in a complex database. The simple ones, on the other hand, often had rather niche implementations.

What I needed was a manager with a familiar interface, a clear and straightforward architecture, and the ability to access a bookmark even with just a plain text editor at hand. Having used Linux and other open-source projects like OpenWrt for years, I knew things could be kept simple. When creating it, I tried to adhere to the "unix philosophy": do one thing well, keep data as plain text, and compose with standard tools (grep, awk, cut). After gathering these ideas and structuring the architecture, this project was born.

Demo

Features

• Small size — a single binary under ~300 KB.
• Tab-separated plain text format (TSV) — bookmarks are stored as plain text: easy to read, parse, sync (syncthing, rclone, gdrive, dropbox, etc), compress, and backup. Also it's 10× more compact than a browser's exported bookmarks.html
• High-performance & lightweight — near-zero CPU load; consumes only 5–10 MB of RAM (tested with 1000+ bookmarks).
• Cross-platform — Linux / Windows / MacOS / OpenWRT / SBC / Android/Termux (x86_64, x86, arm, arm64, mips, mipsel, riscv64)
• Simple interface — a web UI with built-in fuzzy search, a homepage for shortcuts, and everything needed to manage folders and links
• Responsive UI — works on mobile, with light / dark themes (auto-switching).
• Drag-and-drop — organize shortcuts, folders, and bookmarks with touch/pen support.
• Portable — one binary, one config file and one bookmarks file.
• HTTP REST API - with JSON output. The backend supports all the necessary features for managing bookmarks via API.

Getting started

1. Download & run

Grab the binary for your platform from the Releases page, unpack it, and run:

tar -xzf bmkd-linux-x86_64.tar.gz      # or:  unzip bmkd-windows-x86_64.zip
./bmkd                                  # serves http://127.0.0.1:7773

Then open http://127.0.0.1:7773 in your browser. Each archive bundles the binary, a sample conf.txt, README.md, and LICENSE. By default Bemarked listens on localhost only — set bind = "0.0.0.0" in conf.txt to reach it from other devices on your LAN.

Prefer to build from source? Mongoose is already vendored in deps/mongoose/:

cmake -S . -B build
cmake --build build
./build/bmkd

2. Configuration — conf.txt

Simple key = value lines; # starts a comment. Bemarked reads conf.txt from next to the binary, or pass a path explicitly: ./bmkd /path/to/conf.txt.

Key	Default	Meaning
bind	"127.0.0.1"	interface to listen on ("0.0.0.0" exposes it on the LAN)
port	7773	TCP port
bookmarks_file	(next to binary)	path to bookmarks.txt
link_open_mode	"new-tab"	new-tab or same-tab
shortcuts_per_row	7	homepage shortcut grid width
shortcut[N]	—	a homepage shortcut: "name | #hex_color | url"

Example:

port = 7773
bind = "127.0.0.1"
link_open_mode = "new-tab"
shortcuts_per_row = 7
shortcut[0] = "DuckDuckGo | #DE5833 | https://duckduckgo.com"
shortcut[1] = "GitHub | #000000 | https://github.com"

3. Bookmarks file — bookmarks.txt

One bookmark per line, TAB-separated, with a # comment header:

#	id	name	folder	url
7fa93	Linux	dev/sources	https://linux.org
a1b2c	Open Source Initiative	dev/sources/osi	https://opensource.org

• id — short, auto-generated identifier.
• name — the bookmark title.
• folder — a /-separated path encoding subfolders (case-sensitive); empty defaults to unsorted.
• url — the link.

It's just text: edit it in any editor, grep/awk it, sync or back it up. Writes are crash-safe (temp → fsync → atomic rename, keeping one .bak).

Import browser bookmarks

Bemarked reads exported browser bookmarks — the standard HTML format that Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and Safari all produce.

Two ways to import:

• Web UI — ⋮ menu (top-right) → Import bookmarks, then pick the exported .html file.
• CLI — ./bmkd convert bookmarks.html writes a bookmarks.txt.

TODO

• Test on different platforms
• Benchmark with 10k bookmarks, check the RAM and CPU load and publish measured numbers
• Add documentation
• Add a screencast guide

Roadmap

• Browser addons (Firefox, Chrome)
• Add authentication
• Add TLS support
• Add hotkeys / keyboard navigation + vim style navigation
• System tray icon (Windows / macOS / Linux) as an optional, build-time module
• Create native packages for Debian, Fedora, Arch
• Add to Flathub and Snap

Dedications

To my beloved Wife ♥️, for her unwavering love and support.

Support

Bemarked is free and open source. If you find it useful, please consider supporting its development — it helps a lot and is sincerely appreciated.

License

Bemarked is licensed under GPLv2-only (see LICENSE); source files carry SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-only. This matches Mongoose, which is dual-licensed GPLv2 or commercial — because the binary links Mongoose, a permissive redistribution (MIT/Apache) would require either a commercial Mongoose license or swapping Mongoose for a permissively-licensed server. See deps/mongoose/README.md.