The Internet is full of impressive 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-it-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 easily keep track of.
A former Twitter engineer, Joe Fabisevich, created an app called Plinky which aims to tackle this problem with a new approach that prioritizes adaptation.
Available for iPhone, iPad, and Apple silicon Mac, Plinky lets you save links to websites, apps, videos, images, and even app stores. Place them carefully. and organize them in different folders. You can customize these tags and folders, and even how a link appears in the app. Additionally, you can search for links and pin them for easy access.
You can easily favorite the app in the Share menu to quickly share a link from anywhere — within browsers, other apps, messages. 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 build the app because he used to send his fiancée a ton of links — tweets, articles, videos and memes. While she liked the gesture, it was distracting and she asked him to save some of them for later. That’s when Fabisevic started working on Plinky.
The founder believes that the ethos of a link saver app should be to facilitate the process. He noted that apps like Pocket and Instapaper are great for reading, but the links often have videos and photos, and these apps may not be suitable for media consumption.
Fabisevich has also created extensions for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox, as well as integrations with the Unread RSS reader, iOS Shortcuts, and Zapier. There’s also an open API, which third-party developers can use to build integration for more surfaces.
The free version allows you to save up to 50 links and create up to five tags and three folders. To remove these limits, you can pay $3.99 per month or $39.99 per year. Or you can purchase lifetime access for $159.99.
In terms of features, Plinky falls short compared to Raindrop, a popular bookmarking app, which also offers Android, Mac (Intel), and Windows apps. Raindrop offers more integrations, and its free tier lets you store any number of links and bookmarks. However, Raindrop doesn’t play well with YouTube and App Store links, as they open through the in-app browser instead of redirecting you to the native app — a problem that Plinky solves better.
Plinky offers a much better solution than saving links through a browser’s bookmark manager, since it’s easier to organize links in the app with folders and tags.
Fabisevich said he has used Raindrop, but wanted to create a solution that anyone could use. “In their own words, Raindrop is ‘designed for creatives, built for coders,'” he said. “While I like it, as I’m both, it’s a very small fraction of people who would benefit from having a universal inbox for their links.”
“From the first time you save a link in Plinky, you can see the app doing its job and getting away with it. It’s a different approach than Raindrop, which requires you to think about categorization from the start.”
What’s next for Plinky?
In the coming months, Fabisevich wants to build better organization and customization features for the app.
It wants to make it easier for users to import links from existing services like GoodLinks, Raindrop and Pocket, where they may already have a library of bookmarks and clippings.
The founder also aims 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. It also wants to create a native Mac app, as 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 support section of the app has a list of upcoming features that users can vote on. Features with the most votes will be created first.
Longer term, Fabisevich wants to create more personalized workflows for storing and prioritizing links, along with a better search experience.
