# I dropped Pocket for Pinboard >[!info] >This is an [[Blog Archive|archived blog post]]. >Originally posted to Medium Jul 30, 2020 ([link](https://medium.com/@FilSalustri/i-dropped-pocket-for-pinboard-716cf15311cb)). This version is slightly different. Part of my [[Productivity|productivity]] cycle is to save online sources I don't have time to read on the spot for later review. For many years, I have used a free [Pocket](https://getpocket.com/) account to save-with-one-click interesting URLs. Pocket was my "junk drawer" - I threw pretty much everything in there, giving virtually no thought to tagging them or what I might eventually do with them. I would occasionally go through some of my Pocket links, looking for something - or just browsing for something interesting. If I found something good or important that required proper sharing, I would add it to my [Diigo](https://www.diigo.com/user/filsalustri) account (which I curate much more carefully), or post to social media in some fashion. Some links would become incorporated into my courseware or form the basis of blog posts. But throughout this process, I found one of the hardest parts to be getting interesting/useful information back out of Pocket once I put it in there. Over 20,000 links later, I realized my Pocket account was virtually useless to me: - its search function was woefully inept, - tagging items just had too much "friction", and - the UI had become... weird - like how some menus appeared on mouse-over, while others you had to click on to make appear. I reviewed several options, like [raindrop](https://raindrop.io/), but the one that captured my attention is [Pinboard](https://pinboard.in). There is no free version of Pinboard. It (currently) costs 22 USD/yr for the basic service, and 39 USD/yr if you want permanent archival functionality too. I am fortunate enough that these costs don't really impact me financially; but I still require and expect value for my money. It didn't take long for me to realize I no longer needed (or wanted) Pocket. Indeed, just before I started writing this short article, I closed my Pocket account altogether. Here's why I'm very satisfied with Pinboard. **Simplicity.** Both the design and functionality of Pinboard is so clean and minimal that it's almost regressive. Clearly harkening back to the early days of [Delicious](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delicious_(website)), Pinboard uses no fancy CSS, weird "aesthetic" UI elements that only slow down page loads, or animations. Using default fonts and minimal graphics, Pinboard focuses quite strictly on what it claims to provide: managing links and tags in a simple, straight-forward, nearly boring way. What excites me about Pinboard is that it surfaces relevant information quickly, easily, and reliably. There are relatively few options to play with, and they all attend to how information is presented and structured, and not what "theme" you're using, or whether there is a "dark mode". Which is *perfect* for me cuz I hate meaningless distractions. **Speed**. All that simplicity means that Pinboard is quite fast. And that's important to me. Yes, it's a First World Problem that I have to wait seconds rather than milliseconds for a response, but when I'm *in the flow of things*, every wasted second feels like an hour and can throw a monkey-wrench into my thinking. **Openness.** Pinboard will tell you, very discreetly, how long each query to it ran. It will also tell you how many total bookmarks you have, how many dead links there are, how many bookmarks have been archived (and why some some were not), and how much disk space your archive is taking up, as well as a bunch of other things about your account. It does so in a plain, unadorned, yet very well-organized way. I consider this an important matter of *character*, not only of the app, but of the organization behind it (in this case, essentially a single human being). Very few modern day apps will make that much information plainly and honestly available to users. Of course, nothing is perfect, and Pinboard has its... foibles. The two big ones for me are the lack of a well-designed Chrome extension, and idiosyncratic search. There are various tricks and bookmarklets to do pretty much anything you need to do with Pinboard, but it seems rather naive to think that a decent browser extension that provides the same minimalist yet friction-free experience is unnecessary. I really can't understand this shortcoming, because I can only imagine that it would significantly improve the user's experience and drive more people to take Pinboard seriously. Searching, though fast and simple, seems to occasionally miss items. Either that, or there's something about it that I still don't understand (and would thus be easily addressed with a bit of documentation). Still, these shortcomings just cannot make up for the overall superiority of Pinboard's functionality and streamlined user interface. Granted it's a philosophical argument, really, but Pinboard is software as I've always envisioned it would be at its best: distractionless, fast, and robust.