How to Set Up Linkding for Bookmark Management

How to Set Up Linkding for Bookmark Management

Linkding is a minimalist, self-hosted bookmark manager that lets you save, tag, and search your web bookmarks from any device. It is lightweight, fast, and designed to do one thing well. Hosting Linkding on your Breeze gives you a private bookmark collection that syncs across all your browsers without relying on third-party services.

Prerequisites

• A Breeze instance with at least 512 MB of RAM
• Docker installed on your Breeze
• A domain or subdomain (e.g., links.example.com)

Step 1 — Deploy Linkding with Docker

Linkding is packaged as a single Docker container with an embedded SQLite database:

mkdir -p ~/linkding/data
docker run -d \
  --name linkding \
  --restart unless-stopped \
  -p 127.0.0.1:9090:9090 \
  -v ~/linkding/data:/etc/linkding/data \
  sissbruecker/linkding:latest

Step 2 — Create the Admin User

Create your initial admin account via the command line:

docker exec -it linkding python manage.py createsuperuser \
  --username admin --email admin@example.com

You will be prompted to set a password.

Step 3 — Configure the Reverse Proxy

Set up Nginx to serve Linkding over HTTPS:

server {
    listen 443 ssl http2;
    server_name links.example.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:9090;
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
    }
}

Step 4 — Install the Browser Extension

Linkding offers browser extensions for Firefox, Chrome, and Edge. Install the extension and configure it with your server URL and API token (found under Settings → Integrations). The extension adds a toolbar button to quickly save the current page with tags and notes.

Step 5 — Organizing Your Bookmarks

Linkding uses a tag-based organization system rather than folders:

• Tags — assign multiple tags to each bookmark for flexible categorization
• Search — full-text search across bookmark titles, descriptions, URLs, and tags
• Archive — move old bookmarks to an archive to keep your active list clean
• Notes — add personal notes to any bookmark with Markdown support
• Unread — mark bookmarks as unread to create a reading queue

Importing Existing Bookmarks

Linkding supports importing bookmarks from most browsers and services. Export your bookmarks as an HTML file from your browser (Bookmarks → Export), then import them via Settings → Import in Linkding. All bookmarks and folder structure will be converted to tags automatically.

Web Archiving

Enable the built-in web archiving feature to save snapshots of bookmarked pages. This creates a local copy of the page content so you can access it even if the original site goes offline. Configure this under Settings → General by enabling the "Create HTML snapshots" option.

API and Integrations

Linkding provides a REST API for programmatic access. Generate an API token under Settings → Integrations. This enables integration with tools like Raycast, Alfred, mobile shortcuts, and custom scripts. You can also set up RSS feeds for specific tag combinations to monitor new bookmarks.