Using Hookmark with the Pinboard Bookmarking Service

How many times have you searched for a bookmark in Pinboard, only to find that … it’s not there! That’s because you used a traditional bookmark app, which is not really a bookmark manager. With that kind of software, you are the manager: you need to manually add, remove, tag, and otherwise manipulate your bookmarks. And if you forget to bookmark something, well, too bad for you.

In contrast, Hookmark automatically adds bookmarks in its database whenever you copy or hook links.

Furthermore, Hookmark Pro enables you to automatically add Hookmark’s web bookmarks to Pinboard, and to tag them with from:Hookmark.

That means that your Hookmark web bookmarks will be available on all platforms via the Pinboard web interface or your other Pinboard apps. Pinboard provides tagging and full text search. So this provides yet another way for you to access key information.

If enabled in Hookmark’s Services Preferences Tab, Hookmark will automatically add a private Pinboard bookmark for any web bookmark it adds to its own bookmark database. Hookmark creates bookmarks in its database when you use:

  • Copy Link
  • Copy Markdown Link
  • Hook to Copied Link

Hookmark understands that when you use those commands, you want to be able to find the information later! So, with Hookmark, you don’t need to remember to add a Pinboard bookmark (or a Hookmark bookmark). However, you can also manually call Add Bookmark.

How to enable Pinboard bookmarking with Hookmark

Hookmark’s user interface for Pinboard account configuration is standard. First make sure you’re connected to the Internet and that Hookmark has web access. Then:

  1. On the Pinboard website, retrieve your Pinboard API token.
  2. In Hookmark’s Services Preferences Tab, click the “+” button to add an account.
  3. Paste your Pinboard API token in the API token field (Hookmark will parse it).
  4. Make sure the [√] Enable this account checkbox is checked in Hookmark’s Services Preferences tab.

Hook’s Services Preferences Tab will then display:

  • status (online, offline)
  • your username

If you want Hookmark to stop automatically adding bookmarks to Pinboard, disable the account using the same checkbox.

Please note that in Hookmark 3.0, only one Pinboard account is allowed in the services tab. Adding a second account will overwrite the first one. That limitation will be removed in the future.

How to enable or disable tagging

If enabled (which is the default) on Hookmark’s Tags Preferences pane, Hookmark will apply the from:Hook tag to the Pinboard bookmarks it creates. That will make it easy for you to find your bookmarks on Pinboard.

How Hookmark adds Pinboard bookmarks and tags

Once you’ve enabled a Pinboard account in Hookmark, Hookmark will automatically add a private Pinboard bookmark whenever it adds a new Hookmark bookmark.

Hookmark will not sync your prior Hookmark bookmarks. However, whenever you invoke Hookmark on a webpage, if Pinboard is enabled and there is already a bookmark for that webpage in Hookmark’s database, then Hookmark will sync that bookmark to Pinboard.

Reveal Page in Pinboard (⌘R and ⇧⌘R)

Hopefully, you’re very familiar with the extremely handy Reveal File in Finder command that you can apply to any file in Hookmark (⌘R for title menu item; and ⇧⌘R for HOOKED, RECENT, PINNED items and search results). Now you can apply the same commands to web pages! This reveals the page in Pinboard.

This means that with one command (⌘R or ⇧⌘R) you can access the Pinboard page for any web page (even if you haven’t yet bookmarked it!)

No plugin, extension or bookmarklet required!

With other solutions, you need to add a plugin, extension or bookmarklet to every web browser in which you want to use Pinboard. That’s a pain. On iOS, you can use share sheets, which are also a pain.

Hookmark does not impose any such pain. Hookmark itself contains software to integrate with all the major browsers, just like it contains software to integrate with other apps.

Hookmark is the first (and currently only) universal, automatic, keyboard driven Pinboard client.

In a nutshell

With Hookmark, you can:

  • automatically Pinboard-bookmark and tag web pages
  • instantly reveal the Pinboard page for a web page, so you can edit the title, notes and tags of the Pinboard entry (⌘R, ⇧⌘R)
  • instantly add tags to a web page, or view the tags applied to a web page
  • on Pinboard, search for all web bookmarks you’ve added or edited with Hookmark 3.0

If you Copy Link on a web page, and Hook to Copied Link on a non-web page, Hookmark will also add a Pinboard bookmark for the copied link (meaning you don’t need to revisit the original web page for this to happen).

Not a Pinboard user?

No problem! Hookmark also supports other bookmarking software such as Instapaper and GoodLinks. Stay tuned for more :).

Access Hookmark data on iPhone and iPad

This is just one of many ways in which you can access Hookmark data on Mac, iPhone or iPad.

NB:

Pinboard is a paid 3rd party service that is not affiliated with CogSci Apps Corp.