Papaly, a Cloud-based Bookmarks Manager

Martin Brinkmann
Mar 26, 2015
Internet
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21

Papaly is a new cloud-based bookmark manager that you can use directly on the web or in form of a Chrome extension.

The only online bookmarks manager that I ever used for an extended period of time was Delicious when it first launched.

I never used Google Bookmarks and the core reason for that was that Google did not really seem to care about the service at all. I find it astonishing that the company has not sacked it yet.

If you like your bookmarks online, and certain advantages such as universal availability come with that, then Papaly may be right up your alley.

As mentioned earlier, you can use the service without using the Chrome extension but that would limit it to the official website.

While you can create an account on the site right away, a test account is provided that allows you to test most of what the service has to offer without signing up right away. I wish more services would offer such an option.

When it comes to online bookmark managers, certain features should be supported by all of them.

As far as the importing of bookmarks is concerned, Papaly supports direct integration through its Chrome extension or by uploading a bookmarks HTML file. The latter option should cover most browsers. Firefox users find information on how to do that here,

The importing is covered but what about syncing? There is only a Chrome extension currently which means that you can only sync bookmarks with the Google browser currently. When you add a bookmark in Chrome, it gets picked up automatically by Papaly. In addition, when you install the Chrome extension (not the app which is available as well), the startpage of the browser is changed to the bookmark manager automatically. Chrome objects to that so that you get an option to restore the old startpage if you prefer that.

The Chrome extension adds an icon to Chrome's main toolbar that displays all boards on activation to add newly created bookmarks to one of them. There does not seem to be an option to display all bookmarks directly though.

Bookmarks are displayed on pages that the service calls boards. Each board consists of one or multiple groups of bookmarks that you can select freely. Bookmarks are displayed with the site's favicon and a name that you can modify if you want.

A search and a permanent bar are displayed at the top of the website. The search lets you find bookmarks stored on the site while the bar displays site links that you want visible at all time.

Only a handful of display options are provided. It is possible to change the number of columns and the sorting order of categories and bookmarks.

Other options of interest are a duplicate remover, and options to enable the sharing of bookmark boards by disabling the secret flag of them.

Verdict

You can use Papaly without the Chrome extension, for instance by making it the startpage of your Internet browser. There is no syncing though if you don't use the extension and there does not seem to be an export option for manual syncing as well. That's also an issue if you want to leave the service again, as you cannot take your bookmarks with you due to the missing export option. Syncing is in one direction only, from browser to service.

It feels strange that the Chrome extension does not display the bookmarks as well. As it stands, you need to click through to the Papaly page to open bookmarks which is not very comfortable.

Summary
Papaly, a  Cloud-based Bookmarks Manager
Article Name
Papaly, a Cloud-based Bookmarks Manager
Description
Papaly is a cloud-based bookmarks manager that you can use to manage your bookmarks on the Internet so that they become available from any location you access it.
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Comments

  1. Hikari said on September 21, 2019 at 3:20 pm
    Reply

    I just discovered Papaly and sadly see it was left to die. Its extension hasn’t been updated ever since 2017. I’m not confortable to start using a so relevant tool that probably will never be supported.

  2. Sonya Bailey-Barton said on January 22, 2018 at 11:08 pm
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    I just want to know how to delete a bookmark in Papaly..

  3. Forensics Doctor said on February 22, 2016 at 7:41 pm
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    How do I get rid of Papaly. I don’t want it, somebody must have been browsing on my computer when I was gone, and is afraid to admit that they ended up putting this on my computer, but I cannot find it in my programs, I have tried the Firefox extension thing about putting an “x” in front of it, but it just won’t leave. Is it a virus, or is there a more simple way to just get it off of my computer

    1. Martin Brinkmann said on February 22, 2016 at 7:53 pm
      Reply

      Which browser are you using? If you are using Firefox, do you see Palpaly on the about:addons page?

  4. David Harris said on August 24, 2015 at 7:25 pm
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    We use http://www.launch.menu as a cloud bookmark tool. Super nice interface and love the ability to have multiple pages and folders to organize my bookmarks. You can even do unlimted nested folders making the task of dealing with a lot of bookmarks much easier

  5. Cyrucingspots said on June 3, 2015 at 7:22 am
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    This option may not have existed at the time these posts and replies were written, but Papaly bookmarks can be backed up. You need to go to:
    Account Settings > Preferences > Export to HTML file. This can be directly imported into any browser.

  6. PhoneyVirus said on March 28, 2015 at 2:12 am
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    I’ve been using Xmarks for years after Delicious got dumped because of the lack of support, even deleting bookmarks became a chore and with such uselessness forced me to move on. Bookmark-syncing has it benefits but also it’s downs, first the service could be down, and secondly the sync operation could crap out at anytime leaving you with half of your bookmarks or worst none.

    The only thing Xmarks seems to do every now and then is when I add a new separator to a folder that has them, then when I sync the above separator gets removed. Honestly this kinda scares me because I have thousands of links and just thinking about losing them would… shut me down for a very long time to come.

    Truly sad there ant any export option, although I can see myself using this for my Top Software rundown latter on, I do love the layout but not when you thousands of bookmarks.

    Thanks for The Tutorial Marti

  7. cliff said on March 27, 2015 at 1:53 pm
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    I find google’s “favorites” very difficult to use. More often than not for me it results in lost info. so I try avoid it. Have used gmail for a long time &am reluctant to abandon it. Maybe this is solution.

  8. Alek Davis said on March 26, 2015 at 6:35 pm
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    I have been using various bookmark sync solutions from Bookkit, Zinkmo, PlainOldFavorites to Xmarks and Google Bookmarks (btw, Delicious is not really a bookmark sync solution). Now, since Chrome is my primary browser, I just use the built-in sync feature and it seems to work better than anything else I’ve tried thus far. The only problem is that there is no way (or, at least, I did not find one) to view (and fix) your bookmarks online, but since it works quite well, I did not really need to use it (I had to use it on a many occasions when I was running Xmarks). So, for a Chrome-only solution, I’m not quite sure why you’d need a third-party bookmarking service (unless, you run Chrome without logging on to your Google account).

  9. CGA said on March 26, 2015 at 1:08 pm
    Reply

    I’ve been using pinboard.in a couple of years, excellent and minimalistic.

    1. interstellar said on March 27, 2015 at 3:23 am
      Reply

      +1 for PinBoard.
      Have been using it for years
      in my Firefox and Pale Moon browsers.

      Reliable and fast.

      – Pale Moon 25.3.1 and FF 36
      – Ubuntu Linux 12.04 (32-bit)
      – Samsung Tablet Galaxy Tab3 / Android 4.2.2

    2. Declan said on March 26, 2015 at 1:42 pm
      Reply

      Martin, I’m curious if in your testing you could sync with two separate computers using Chrome? For instance, I have several computers in a small office network. Could I install the plug-in on two or three of the computers, and using the same Papaly account, have one computer sync to the service, and the others recognize that action and all sync together? That would be great if it worked that way.

      1. PhoneyVirus said on March 28, 2015 at 2:34 am
        Reply

        This was something I had on the Radar late last year and it involves Xmarks You need a server for XMarks to sync to, and it supports both WebDAV and FTP. Took me awhile to fine the link as I thought it was on Xmarks website, now I don’t know if this article is any good because I didn’t try it, hey at least it’s something right. Basically you’ll need Internet Information Services (IIS) service, yes it’s not secure and usually used for web hosting I believe or other services that rely on it.

        http://firefoxatwork.blogspot.ca/2011/06/autoconfiguring-xmarks-for-logged-in.html
        http://wilddtech.com/roksbox/home/index.php/component/content/article?id=79

      2. Martin Brinkmann said on March 26, 2015 at 1:52 pm
        Reply

        I was not able to test that as I only have one computer currently that I can use to connect to the Internet. Since the service offers one-way sync only, I suppose it adds any bookmark you add from any of your computers to it.

        It is not syncing back to your Chrome bookmarks which appears to be what you would like. You can still access all bookmarks using the startpage interface but that is about it.

  10. c00ller said on March 26, 2015 at 9:03 am
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    Have you heard of Xmarks? It’s a cloud-based bookmarks syncing tool that’s been around for a long time and got acquired by LastPass around a year ago. It’s compatible with Chrome, Firefox, IE, and even Safari.

    1. benberst said on March 26, 2015 at 9:22 am
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      Except that Xmarks has been going downhill ever since they were acquired buy LastPass. Definitely a lot of potential with Papaly and looking forward to what they have in store in the near future.

      1. Trebuchette said on March 27, 2015 at 5:20 pm
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        It’s not going downhill. It’s not adding useless “features” and has saved my backside (and very complicated bookmark structure) with ease more than once. Across platforms. And I’ve never worried once about privacy either.

      2. c00ller said on March 27, 2015 at 5:09 pm
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        @benberst I am also unsure of what you mean by “going downhill”.

      3. DonGateley said on March 26, 2015 at 8:04 pm
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        @benberst: in what way have you experienced Xmarks going downhill? I’ve used it for a long time and haven’t noticed that. It does seem to to have become static though without ongoing development.

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on March 26, 2015 at 9:08 am
      Reply

      Yeah I mentioned it several times here on this site, for instance on this page: https://www.ghacks.net/2011/03/07/whats-the-best-bookmark-manager/

      1. April Winters said on December 12, 2021 at 3:51 pm
        Reply

        Can the data in papaly be backed up in case there is an issue?

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