Getting Started
If you're new to the site, take a look at the tour of Pinboard to get familiar with our features.
You may also want to look at our list of useful Pinboard resources.
If you get stuck, send us email or find us on Twitter.
Saving Bookmarks
Pinboard uses bookmarklets for bookmarking. Bookmarklets are little javascript links that live in the bookmarks toolbar of your browser.
Here's the list of bookmarklets we offer:
- popup opens a little form window when you want to bookmark a page. It's the fastest way to add a bookmark.
- popup with tags is a slightly larger bookmarklet that shows a clickable tag cloud.
- same page will load the save bookmark form in the same window as the page, with no popup. It redirects back to the page afterwards.
- my pinboard will take you to your bookmarks.
- read later will add a URL to your list of "to read" items without badgering you for tags or descriptions.
There's also a couple of shortcuts to your bookmarks:
If you use Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera, you can drag these links up to your bookmarks toolbar. You can rename them to whatever you like by right-clicking and choosing 'edit name'.
If you're using Internet Explorer, dragging won't work. Right-click on the bookmarklet instead, and select 'add to Favorites' at the prompt.
Privacy
Bookmarks on Pinboard can be public or private. Only you can see your private bookmarks. They have a grey box around them.
You can set bookmarks as public or private using the checkbox on the add and edit forms. You can also have all your bookmarks be private by default by turning on the appropriate setting on the settings page.
Pinboard also offers private tags. These work the same way as regular tags, but are only visible to you. Any tag beginning with a dot (.) is considered private. Private tags also show up in a grey box.
Importing Bookmarks
Pinboard lets you import your existing bookmarks from most anywhere. Importing bookmarks will preserve all your tags, and anything marked private will stay private.
First, you'll need to export your bookmarks into a file that Pinboard can read. Here's how to export bookmarks from some common places:
- Google Reader
- Click the gear icon in the upper right corner of the page.
- Select the Import/Export tab.
- Choose either items you have starred or items you have shared and click the Reader JSON link (the rightmost column)
- Delicious.com
- Go to your settings page
- Select export/back up links from the right sidebar.
- Click the Export button (use the default settings).
- Firefox
- Select Show All Bookmarks from the Bookmarks menu.
- A new window called Library will open.
- Click on the icon that looks like a star and choose 'Backup...'.
- Diigo: go to Tools -> Export Bookmarks and choose to export in "Delicious Format".
- Safari: choose File -> Export Bookmarks.
- Chrome:
- Go to the Bookmarks menu and choose Bookmark Manager
- Click the Organize link in the blue navigation bar
- select Export Bookmarks to HTML File...
Once you've exported your bookmarks, go to the settings page on Pinboard, choose the 'import tab', and upload the file there.
Your bookmarks should import within no more than five minutes. If there are duplicates in your import file, Pinboard will ignore them (so it's safe to import the same thing multiple times).
Exporting your bookmarks
You can export your bookmarks in a variety of formats on the export page.
Feeds and Syndication
Pinboard offers RSS and JSON feeds for most pages on the site. The format for public RSS feeds is:
http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:username/http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/recent/JSON feeds have a similar structure, but note the version number:
http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/v1/u:username/http://feeds.pinboard.in/json/v1/recent/You can also filter any feed by up to three tags:
http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:username/t:tag/http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/u:username/t:tag1/t:tag2/t:tag3/http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/t:tag1/t:tag2/We offer private feeds for individual user accounts. These contain an additional secret token, to preserve users' privacy:
http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/secret:xxxx/u:username/private/http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/secret:xxxx/u:username/unread/http://feeds.pinboard.in/rss/secret:xxxx/u:username/network/
If you share the secret token, anyone will be able to see your private bookmarks, so take care.
You can find the RSS feed URL for any page by clicking on the orange "RSS" link, or by clicking on the RSS icon in your browser's toolbar.
All our feeds are available by https if you'd like added security.
Don't see a feed you need? Let us know and we'll cook it up for you.
Bookmark by Email
You can configure Pinboard to let you add bookmarks to your account by email. This can be useful if you are using a mobile device (like an iPhone) where it's easier to email a bookmark than to submit it with JavaScript.
The email format is simple. The subject line is the bookmark title, the first line of the email is the URL, followed by an optional description and optional line of tags. Here's a sample email:
To: secret-email-address@pinboard.in Subject: This year's potato harvest http://www.wisbusiness.com/index.iml?Article=166262 Another fine Wisconsin festival I want to attend. wisconsin t fair potato ha
There are two special one-letter tag shortcuts. Including the single letter p in the tags line will make your bookmark private, while t will mark it as unread.
Posting by email is turned off by default. To enable it, go to the settings page and click the appropriate checkbox. Once you've turned the feature on, you'll see the email address you can use to post bookmarks.
Be careful not to share this email address; anyone who has it will be able to post to your account.
API
Pinboard offers a full API, modeled on v1 of the del.icio.us API.
Most software that uses the delicious API can be modified to work for Pinboard simply by replacing the endpoint with https://api.pinboard.in/v1/.
See our API Documentation for all the details.
Mobile
A Pinboard optimized for mobile devices is available at http://m.pinboard.in/
There are also numerous third-party mobile apps available for iPhone, iPad, Android, and many other devices. These are listed on our resources page.