I'll vouch for Raindrop.io. I've been paying for it for a few years. Very easy to lob bookmarks in from any browser I use, desktop or mobile. Their app's easy to open quickly and search on desktop and mobile as well. It's been around a while, seems to stick to its focus.

I loosely maintain both collections and tags. They pack in lots of searchable icons to apply to your collections. It's a good app.

Happily using https://pinboard.in since years. Good service and an overall decent person running the service too.

On the Mac I am using a Bookmarklet (to add bookmarks) and on the Phone I use Simlepin (https://simplepinapp.com) to add/manage them.

I host Linkding for myself and love it. Open source alternative to Pin board without Maciej's periodic transphobia. It's lightweight, simple, and does one thing well.

I also used Pinboard for a long time, but recently switched to Raindrop.io and have found it quite good.

I've very much been loving self-hosted Karakeep, although Linkwarden is really nice too. (Honestly, I think it's more about which UI you like better.) They both do full text indexing, they're super easy to add URLs to, they save local PDF and HTML archives of the time you bookmarked them, and you can have fully local AI throw together tags for them just in case you want them later. (I find the tags are mostly useful just to get a little more context at a glance.)

I’ve been using Raindrop.io for a while and I’m pretty happy with it.

I’ve also been keeping an eye on Plinky, but it’s relatively new, so it may not meet your criteria. I love that it’s fresh, simple, and under active development with a clear roadmap.

MyMind.com is essentially a personal/private Pinterest. It's highly visual, has elegant Mac and iOS apps, and automatically generates AI summaries and tags. But at $129/year, it’s pricey.

Might be worth looking at Linkwarden (https://linkwarden.app). They have a cloud and self-hosted solution. It meets most of your requirements.

Not exactly what you want but I'd recommend trying Cultured Code's Things (the quick input shortcut feature is fantastic for notes and saving links with annotations, not only todos). GoodLinks could work very well for that (not a simple read it later app), but it might require some tags. Closer to your requirements, I'd look at EagleFiler (and maybe a companion plain-text editing shortcut for mobile). My own system is an Apple Shortcut that appends the active URL+page title to a text file, and prompts me for a quick note before saving. The txt file is synced between my devices. This could be easily replicated with a few Drafts actions I think.

Longtime happy Raindrop.io user. I use it for bookmarks, an image archive, and a place for PDFs, and it's as flexible and as complex as you want it to be. The machine-learning additions are sensible and actually helpful. There's been a steady flow of releases and updates over the past nine years I've been a member and the support has been excellent. A++++ would bookmark again

I am a long-time user of Zotero (https://www.zotero.org/) for bookmarking in my writing research and archiving. It captures a local copy (when feasible), integrates into major browsers, offers searching and sorting, etc. I've only used the desktop version on Mac, but it has highly rated mobile apps.

It's free to run locally, or you can pay a monthly subscription ($20-$120 per year, depending on requirements) to keep devices synced.

My only complaint is that the icon in the browser toolbar changes depending on what kind of page you're looking at (e.g., Wikipedia has a custom icon, as does YouTube). This sometimes makes it take a moment to figure out which icon is the one I want.

Readwise/Reader sounds like it ticks all your boxes. Certainly worth a look. A combination of browser extensions and apps that stay in the background. Works great, super reasonable. Has been around a looong time, and keeps getting better. As the name implies, it's a power tool for people who like text. Full text search, highlighting, notes, and links back to the original URL. It stores a copy of the content so you still have it if the original source link goes dead or offline. (The same function that allows for fast full text search.) You can even use it to subscribe to RSS feeds (like I do for Kottke). Syncs across all your devices.

Not just for URLs! Also works with PDFs, and huge bonus, with digital books. So if I highlight text in a document on a subject related to something found of the web or vice versa, there's a logical thread connecting all the different sources. If you do want to create a group or collection, you can use tags or saved search queries that create filtered views on a topic, sort of like smart folders.

OMG how has no one mentioned Anybox?

It has native iOS and macOS apps, syncs over iCloud and charges a reasonable subscription fee for advanced stuff. I’m pretty sure it’s made by one person. You can go crazy with tagging and folders or just put things in one big list. You can annotate. And it grabs thumbnails of your bookmarks so you can see as cards with pictures or as a list.

Plus great import / export options and I think the database is just a json file in your iCloud folder so you can work with it directly if you really want.

It’s just a really nice interface to work with your bookmarks and you own all the data. Highly recommend.

I do also use obsidian which I like for its flexibility but that’s its whole own can of bees.

I abandoned raindrop.io to find a more apple-native feeling solution and came upon Artifacts per someone's suggestion. I've been a beta tester on it since and it's already become my default bookmark library. Tagging and categories are a part of it but it works great as a searchable "junk drawer" as well (hoping future AI features will make organization more hands-off). The apple-ness of it is spot-on. Seamless on all the idevices. I'm ready for them to fully launch. You should join the beta!

I'd been using Pocket, with an if this then that applet set up to create a line google sheet that pulled in the titles, links and any other heading info. it worked really well, but Pocket has shut down. the issue for me was i am usually pulling in a bunch of links all at once and the work of editing titles and links was really annoying. i was just using date captured as my tags, so it was just a big bucket. i'm using instapaper now, which i didn't see anyone mention - it seems fine, but i haven't created an email using it yet, so tbd

Nothing has come close to UpNote. Use it on all devices, grab from anywhere, awesome search. Yes you can add folders etc if that works for you – which it would for your "other stuff (travel, bikes, design, internet, movies, etc.)"

Bookmark Ninja! There are two modes; I use the Dashboard mode but "My Bookmarks" mode might be what you're looking for!

Another satisfied, relatively longtime Raindrop user (former Pinboard, former Delicious, probably some other things in there).

One thing I use it is posting to my blog. When I find something I want to share I write a description and tag it (“share,” I’m not that creative, haha). Through the magic of IFTTT it posts to Wordpress. You can have it post as a draft but I usually have it set to post directly.

I’ve been enjoying https://www.plinky.app/ for this use case.

Like a few above, I was a long time user of Pinboard but stopped once I discovered his views, and deleted my account.

Raindrop seems to be a favorite of many friends but I wanted to keep things super simple and integrate with something I already use a lot for notes: Bear. I like the file over app philosophy.

With that in mind (and not a plug, but maybe a friendly nudge to roll your own like the music player!), I made a little script with the help of Claude to get Automator on MacOS and Shortcuts on IOS to send any URL I’m viewing to Bear.

https://nazhamid.com/journal/bookmark-to-bear/

I'm resolved to self host linkding next time Pinboard suffers weeks-long outages from neglect. If I were looking for hosted I'd use Raindrop.

I set up linkding from a Pinboard export. It took like 5 minutes and seemed to work fine.

Based on this thread giving Raindrop a try, long time (10+ years) Instapaper user. For any other IP users, import was quite easy, you need to sort folders by new to old to get the same experience as IP. First impression (understanding this thread is about bookmarks not reading), I wish with changes to settings so it was 10% more 'reader' both mobile and desktop app, particularly in desktop opening in preview fullscreen vs popping open original page.

Came here to suggest you consider Postmarks a bookmarking site that you own yourself and can connect the Fediverse (via ActivityPub), because no one else seems to have. I stood up Postmarks on my own server when it started to look like Pinboard was going down hill. I don't federate my content but use it like other bookmarking services I've used in the past to tag things I want to find again someday.

And, for what it is worth, I also came across (and bookmarked) karakeep when I was on the path to migrating to Postmarks, just in case.

After being a long time Pinboard user I tried them all until I found Linkding that is such a delight. Same good stuff that Pinboard has (I just miss the /popular section) and none of the downsides. I can't really emphasize enough how good it is.

Have you considered trying Safari’s “Read Later” and “Add Bookmark To” features? I think they click all your buttons. Free. Syncs across devices. Just a thought.

I was a longtime pinboard.in user, for a decade +. It was technically fine, but once I became aware of the developers politics, I moved to Raindrop.io. I'm currently using the free plan, and have been happy. It works well on MacOS and IOS, as well as Linux. I hadn't thought of self hosting, I might investigate some of those suggestions, but to date Raindop has been great.

I'm not a very tech-y person, but I've just recently started playing around with Notion. It seems like it could do this (and can do a lot more if you want it to).

Can of…bees? I’ve never heard that expression before. Can of worms, yes. But not bees. Is that a midwest thing? Vermont?

But, I have no answer to your call for suggestions. I keep gathering piles of bookmarks and data and then abandoning them as they become largely obsolete. My treasure trove of Zune and MythTV hacks aren't very useful anymore.