Show HN: Arcmark – macOS bookmark manager that attaches to browser as sidebar

Hey HN! I was a long-time Arc browser user and loved how its sidebar organized tabs and bookmarks into workspaces. I wanted to switch to other browsers without losing that workflow. So I built Arcmark, it's a macOS bookmark manager (Swift/AppKit) that floats as a sidebar attached to any browser window. It uses macOS accessibility API to follow the browser window around.

You get workspace-based links/bookmarks organization with nested folders, drag-and-drop reordering, and custom workspace colors. For the most part I tried replicating Arc's sidebar UX as close as possible.

1. Local-first: all data lives in a single JSON file ( ~/Library/Application Support/Arcmark/data.json). No accounts, no cloud sync.

2. Works with any browser: Chrome, Safari, Brave, Arc, etc. Or use it standalone as a bookmark manager with a regular window.

3. Import pinned tab and spaces from Arc: it parses Arc's StorableSidebar.json to recreate the exact workspace/folder structure.

4. Built with swift-bundler rather than Xcode.

There's a demo video in the README showing the sidebar attachment in action. The DMG is available on the releases page (macOS 13+), or you can build from source.

This is v0.1.0 so it's a very early version. Would appreciate any feedback or thoughts

GitHub: https://github.com/Geek-1001/arcmark

github.com

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52 points

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ahmed_sulajman

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5 hours ago

13 comments

WhyNotHugo ・ 2 hours ago

Bookmark managers being a separate application is a brilliant idea. Like password managers, they can be full blown standalone applications, with lots of functionality and variability.

I wish Firefox and others had good IPC for external applications to function as bookmark manager, password manager, etc. Browsers can then focus on being browsers, and we have have a variety of external bookmark managers exploring different design ideas, or focusing on different workflows.

  • ahmed_sulajman ・ 2 hours ago

    For sure! I briefly looked into integrating more with browsers, for example, to better what's currently opened in different windows. But so far the only way I found was to rely heavily on macOS accessibility API to get some bi-directional data flow between the browser and the external app.

    Or alternatively try to do this kind of integration via a browser extension. I know Raycast is doing something similar with their browser extension, when the extension acts as a proxy between the app and the browser to deliver different context to the app

    • pbalau ・ 9 minutes ago

      I am planning to use the extension route to... bypass the imgur UK block. Just need to use imgur for more than once in a while.

hibajiri ・ an hour ago

I noticed there is an Always on Top option in Settings, but I cannot enable it. Do I need to grant any additional permissions? Also, it would be great if the app could read bookmarks from other browsers and support cloud syncing of the JSON file via WebDAV.

  • ahmed_sulajman ・ an hour ago

    Right now Always on Top options can be enabled only when you're not in the "attachment mode". Because when the app is attached to browser window it shows the sidebar only when it becomes active. I'll see if I can find some solution

    As for importing from other browsers, this is definitely on my list (at least Chrome and Firefox). I just did Arc first because that's where I wanted to migrate from

mbreese ・ 3 hours ago

This looks like a nice project!

I always have a love hate relationship with bookmarks. I tend to treat bookmarks as a write once read never datastore. I have a set of 2-3 bookmarklets that I use often, but almost never use other bookmarks. I do keep an archive of pages or links I find interesting, but I store those in a separate archive (self hosted Karakeep).

So, I’m legitimately curious — for the author or others — how do you use bookmarks? What is your personal usage pattern? Do you have many pages you need to keep track of? Is there much churn or adding of new bookmarks? I’d like to make beater use of my stored links, but right now it is really a write-only archive.

  • WhyNotHugo ・ 2 hours ago

    I use bookmark tags a lot, and rely on them to quickly find things in future.

    I bookmark all sorts of things. Projects or articles that I think I'll likely need in future, issues which I report and might need to reference in future, etc.

    I'm sure over 50% of my bookmark were written and never read, but I definitely query all sorts of old bookmarks nearly every day.

  • ahmed_sulajman ・ 2 hours ago

    Thank you! I have similar issues with bookmark managers overall. When they are too far from where I use them, it turns into a list of links I never read

    In Arc, I'd organize links in dedicated workspaces for each project (personal or work). So whenever I work on a specific project, I'd open that workspace and have all the necessary links right there. For example, I tend to check Product Hunt often, and I have a dedicated workspace where I'd store products organized by my personal use cases. So next time I'm looking for a tool for something, I'd just open that workspace and search

  • robrain ・ 2 hours ago

    I use Obsidian (other note-taking apps and editor modes are available) and generally write at least a sentence about each bookmark. Subject areas get their own notes/bookmarks and I use the available linking and tagging options to try to make the resource more useful and easier to refer to in the future.

samename ・ 2 hours ago

Cool project! I’m a tab hoarder and this seems like it’ll be a good help, excited to try it

  • ahmed_sulajman ・ 2 hours ago

    Nice! Thank you! Let me know what you think

    It's quite an early version, but I've been using it for the last few days and it's really nice to have bookmarks so close to the browser

EyMaddis ・ an hour ago

This is hilarious! I love it!

(I don’t want to be “that guy” but are you aware of the Zen Browser? It was a drop in replacement for me and I love it)

  • ahmed_sulajman ・ an hour ago

    Thank you! Yeah I tried Zen a while ago. It was generally awesome and I saw they invested a lot in the experience lately. Need to give it another try for sure If only it wasn't Firefox-based, that would have been perfect :)