A new open-source tool named Bookmark Manager Zero has been introduced to the public through a Show HN post on Hacker News. The project is a Progressive Web App (PWA) designed for privacy-conscious users, offering on-device bookmark management and integrity verification without requiring accounts or cloud synchronization.
The developer, posting under the username ‘pennine’, outlined the core functionality of the tool. Bookmark Manager Zero stores all user data locally in the browser’s IndexedDB. It is engineered to import standard bookmark HTML files from browsers like Chrome and Firefox. Once imported, the application runs background checks to maintain the quality of the user’s bookmark collection.
Key Features and Privacy-First Approach
Bookmark Manager Zero’s primary function is to perform integrity checks on saved links directly on the user’s device. These checks are designed to identify several issues, including broken links by verifying HTTP status codes (e.g., 4xx and 5xx errors), detecting duplicate bookmarks, and flagging outdated page titles or descriptions. The tool can suggest updates to a bookmark’s metadata by fetching the latest title and description from the live webpage.
The project’s name, ‘Zero’, reflects its stated philosophy of “zero cloud, zero accounts, zero tracking.” By operating entirely on the client-side, it avoids sending user bookmark data to any external servers for processing or storage. The application is available as a PWA, allowing it to be installed on both desktop and mobile platforms for an app-like experience without being tied to a specific browser’s extension store.
Technical Implementation and Community Discussion
During the discussion on Hacker News, the developer explained that the tool uses a proxy to bypass Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS) restrictions when fetching webpage content for integrity checks. The code for this proxy is also open source, and users have the option to self-host it. When a user questioned the use of GET requests over more lightweight HEAD requests, the developer clarified that GET is necessary to retrieve the page’s HTML content for updating titles and descriptions.
Community members also discussed the tool’s limitations, such as its inability to check links that are behind paywalls or require user authentication, as the checks are performed without login credentials. The author confirmed that the tool has functionality to check a bookmark upon adding it and also supports exporting the user’s bookmark collection. The project’s source code is publicly available on GitHub.
Concise Cyber 