I talked a little bit about Raindrop on Cohost and people were interested in hearing about how I use it more so here's that. 👍🏾 [Raindrop](https://raindrop.io/) is a bookmarking app. If you drop links in Discord or Telegram or your friend's DMs or whatever, it's time to stop and use this instead. You deserve better than that (and so do your friend's DMs). Using it is super simple, and I don't need to gas it up that much because they don't pay me for that. Instead I'll just walk you through how I use it. ## Raindrop 101 You can access Raindrop in a whole bunch of places. I have it as an [extension](https://raindrop.io/r/extension/firefox), a [desktop app](https://help.raindrop.io/download-app/)[^1], and a [mobile app](https://raindrop.io/r/app/android). This is imperative because I need to remove friction when dumping stuff into the app. And that's the main way I use Raindrop - a place to dump stuff the minute I see it. Yes it's because of the [[ADHD]]. If I don't do that, it takes up my mental bandwidth, and I need that focus for important stuff, like devouring [[SAND LAND (2024)|Sand Land]] across the span of a week. So when I see something I care about even the slightest bit, into Raindrop it goes. You can put *anything* in Raindrop - pdfs, YouTube videos I wanna watch while I eat dinner, [[Vinyl and Me|vinyl]] I wanna buy, [[Freaky Little Apps|freaky little apps]] that I think are cool, inspiration for stuff I wanna write, and more. If you're on your phone, you can use the share extension to add it to Raindrop without even having to context switch apps and keep it pushing. If I'm on Desktop, I just click the extension and hit save. ![[How I Use Raindrop-20240519140557716.png]] As you can see though, you can do more than just hit save. If you need some additional context you can write a quick note. If you already know what collection it needs to be in, you can add that too, as well as add relevant tags (we'll get to collections in a second). You can add it to your favorites, and if you pay for Raindrop Pro you can add a reminder to resurface the bookmark in a notification later. You can [highlight stuff](https://help.raindrop.io/highlights/) too. So that's what I do throughout the week. Then on Sunday I do my Raindrop Review. I take an hour or so to go through each Unsorted link and move it to the proper collection as well as get into whatever it was I bookmarked. Here's my series of collections: ![[How I Use Raindrop-20240519141012886.png]] I'll also use this review to go through each collection and see if there's anything I need to take another look at. This is because I don't do shit on Sundays, which makes it perfect for my broken brain to be let lose and wander down whatever rabbit holes it wants with peace. Anything that I've acted on or don't need to think about actively any more gets put into the Archive collection, so that it doesn't continue to take my attention as I scroll around. That's pretty much how I use it, but there's two other tips I'll give. ## Sharing in Raindrop You can make your collections in Raindrop shareable too, which is pretty cool. You can invite people to a collection, meaning they can add and edit items to it as well, or just let them be viewers. You can even turn a collection into a public page that anyone can take a look at. [Here's my wishlist as an example](https://raindrop.io/barquq/wishlist-43427402) (don't judge or I'll take it down). ## IFTTT Integrations If you wanna get really fancy, you can use [IFTTT integrations](https://ifttt.com/raindrop) to make saving to Raindrop even more automated. Two examples: - If you hit the like button on a video on YouTube, it'll automatically get saved to Raindrop - If you favorite something in your RSS reader, have it get added to an "Articles" collection in Raindrop There's more than that, but it's better to start small. But yeah that's pretty much it. The reason I'm pushing for this app so hard is because I am of the belief that it's better to collect things than leave them in your head or hanging around waiting to be given some respect in your ever-growing sea of tabs. Your brain should be used for doing things, not remembering (or trying to remember) things. And this app helps with that. I hope it helps you too. [^1]: It's even on Linux!