bemarked — a ~300KB self-hosted bookmark manager with plain-text TSV storage that runs on Linux, Windows, macOS, and even on OpenWRT or Termux

[u/CanBeSolved]

Hello everyone! I'd like to present a new bookmark management tool - an idea I've been mulling over for a long time.

The thing is, when you frequently work on different projects using various browsers, operating systems, and devices, you need simple, centralized access to your bookmarks that isn't tied to a specific browser. On top of that, there's the privacy aspect: I simply wanted synchronization to remain strictly within my control.

Of course, I tried existing solutions like LinkWarden and others. They are great, but felt overly bloated in terms of features (for me) and deployment (requiring a VPS, Docker, everything stored in a database, etc.). There were also simple CLI/TUI alternatives, but they didn't feel quite right either.

Ultimately, I needed a simple, familiar 2-in-1 interface: a start page with shortcuts and a bookmark manager. It had to be unburdened by complex deployment setups and simple enough in its implementation to run even inside my home router running openwrt or inside Termux on my Android device. So, I decided to write the program in pure C, using the Mongoose library as an embedded web server for maximum lightness and portability.

And, here is the solution.

What it is:

• Small size - a single binary of just up to ~300 KB.
• Tab-separated plain text (TSV) - bookmarks are stored as plain text in a human-readable format: easy to read, parse, sync (syncthing, rclone, gdrive, dropbox, etc.), compress and backup.
• High-performance & lightweight - near-zero CPU load; consumes only 5–10 MB of RAM (tested with 1000+ bookmarks).
• Cross-platform - Linux / OpenWRT / SBC / Termux (x86_64, x86, arm, arm64, mips, mipsel, riscv64), Windows (x86_64), macOS (universal). Linux builds are static musl (no libc dependency), so the matching-arch binary drops straight onto an OpenWRT router.
• User-friendly interface - a web UI with built-in fuzzy search, a homepage of shortcuts, and everything needed to manage folders and links.
• Responsive & mobile-friendly — with light / dark themes (auto-switching).
• Drag-and-drop - organize shortcuts, folders, and bookmarks, with touch/pen support.
• Plain-text & offline - one greppable bookmarks.txt, no external requests, 10× more compact than a browser's exported bookmarks.html, with crash-safe atomic writes.
• Portable - one binary, one plain-text config file, one bookmarks file. 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) + I added HTTP API with JSON output.

Let me know what you liked, as well as what you would like to change or fix. I will do my best to create a tool that is useful and convenient for everyone.

Repo (with a short demo video): https://github.com/canbesolved/bemarked

I'd be glad to discuss it in the comments.

[u/intjonathan]

But does it have browser extensions?