Frequently Asked Questions

General

What is Pinboard?

Pinboard is a personal archive for things you find online. You save bookmarks to the site and can find and search them later from any computer. You can also set the site up to automatically import your links and tweets from a number of other services. I explain the purpose and history of the site in more detail on the about page.

Why should I use Pinboard?

What sets Pinboard apart is speed, minimialism, and clarity of purpose.

We focus on personal archiving rather than publishing and we remove as much of the friction as possible from bookmarking. We are faster than all of our competitors. We are religious about backing up your data, and testing those backups. We don't assume everyone speaks or bookmarks in English. We believe that a personal archive should just work. And for users who choose the archiving option, we are the only site that stores and indexes full page content, not just HTML.

Since we're a small site, our customers can receive prompt support straight from the developers. And we have a proven revenue model ('charge money for a product or service') that has kept us profitable since launch, and insures we'll be around as an independent project for years to come.

I encourage you to ask our current users about us on Twitter, or try competing sites and see the difference for yourself. When it comes to fast, reliable, and durable bookmarking, you will not be disappointed in Pinboard.

Why should I pay for bookmarking?

Pinboard is different from our competitors in that we charge a small, one-time signup fee of around $10. This obviously benefits us, but it also has numerous benefits for our customers:

The site has never had link spam. We can afford to run it on very fast hardware. We can afford to hire outside contractors where appropriate. I am able to devote all my time to working on Pinboard, rather than looking for ways to pay for Pinboard. There are no outside investors to answer to. There's no incentive to sell the website to someone else, who might not have the same vision for it. And we can guarantee that we will never show you ads or resell your data.

Moreover, the project is sustainable. There have been many social bookmarking sites that either outgrew their funding or got bought by companies that then shut them down. It makes no sense to offer a personal archive if you don't have a plan to keep it running as an independent entity in the long term.

It boils down to this: running a bookmarking site costs money. If you're not paying for it, then someone else is, and their interests may not be aligned with yours.

How can I get support?

The quickest way to get support is by emailing us at support@pinboard.in or pinging us on Twitter. We also run an IRC channel on freenode.

Many common questions are answered in this FAQ or on our howto page. If you have a feature suggestion, consider posting it to our Google group so that other users can comment.

Import

Can I import bookmarks from my browser or another website?

You can import bookmarks from Delicious, Google Bookmarks, Safari, Firefox, Diigo, and most other online services that use a Netscape-style export format. You can't import directly from Instapaper or Evernote yet. There are more specific instructions on importing available on our howto page.

Will I lose my tags when I import?

No. Pinboard preserves all your tags during import, as well as other important bookmark metadata (creation time, privacy).

How long does import take?

You should see your imported bookmarks appear within thirty seconds of uploading them. Your tag cloud should update within a minute or two at most, and your bookmarks will be searchable within about five minutes.

Will my private bookmarks stay private when I import?

Yes. Pinboard honors privacy settings in your import file. Additionally, if you select 'add all bookmarks as private' in your user settings your imported bookmarks will be marked private without exception.

What happens if I import the same bookmarks twice?

If the bookmarks are identical, Pinboard will ignore duplicates. If there are new tags on the duplicate bookmarks, Pinboard will add them. If a bookmark being imported has a description field where the existing version of the bookmark doesn't, Pinboard will add that description. If either the new or the old version of the bookmark is marked private, Pinboard will set the saved bookmark to private.

Can I automatically add a tag during import?

There's no way to do this now except by using the API.

My import failed, what do I do?

First, make sure your import file actually has bookmarks in it! A number of Delicious users have found that the site sometimes generates empty export files. If everything seems to be in order with the import file, send an email with your username to support@pinboard.in and attach your import file.

Saving Bookmarks

How do I save new bookmarks?

Most people add bookmarks using the bookmarklets. These are little pieces of javascript you can drag into your browser toolbar (if you use IE, you have to right-click them and choose 'add to favorites' instead). You can find bookmarklets and more detailed instructions on the howto page (or see the next question).

You can also add bookmarks via the API, or through one of the many third-party apps that support Pinboard, or by clicking the 'add URL' link on your user page and entering the URL directly.

How do I install a bookmarklet?

If you're using Safari or Chrome, make sure the bookmarks toolbar is visible and drag one of the bookmarklets from our howto page on to the toolbar. If you're using IE, right-click the bookmarklet and select 'add to favorites'.

Can I save a bookmark without filling out a web form?

Many of our users like the 'read later' bookmarklet, which saves pages to your unread list without requiring any further action on your part. We'll have a bookmarklet available soon that will let save regular bookmarks the same way (with optional tag).

Can I automatically add a tag every time I save a bookmark?

Viewing Bookmarks

How can I see all bookmarks from a specific source?

Bookmarks from outside sources (like Twitter or Instapaper) have a blue tag in the form "from:source". You can click on this to see all bookmarks from that source. You can also edit the URL directly - for example, http://pinboard.in/u:username/from:delicious/ will show you all your bookmarks from that service.

Can I filter my bookmarks by multiple tags?

You can filter your bookmarks by up to three tags. The syntax for this is http://pinboard.in/u:username/t:first/t:second/t:third/. The same syntax will work for RSS feeds and global tag pages. We're working on making this something you can do through the UI.

Can I sort my bookmarks by title? By edit date?

For the time being there is no way to sort bookmarks other than chronologically.

Can I see a list of all my dead links?

Yes, if you have an archival account. Your profile page will show you how many bookmarks you have with various error codes, and you can click through to see a complete, editable list.

Editing Bookmarks

How do I delete all my bookmarks?

Use the 'edit' link at the top of your user page. Select 'all pages' and delete away.

How can I make changes to many bookmarks at once?

The 'edit' link at the top of your user page will let you add or remove tags, change unread status, and bulk delete your bookmarks.

Is there a faster way to tag my bookmarks than clicking 'edit' on each one?

Try the 'organize' link at the top of your homepage, or any one of your tag pages. It opens your bookmarks in a view designed for fast editing. You can turn on an optional preview of the bookmarked site in a separate frame.

Can I automatically remove all dead links?

If you have an archival account, you can view bookmarks that have errors and perform bulk operations on them, including deletion.

Can I include HTML in descriptions?

The only HTML element allowed in descriptions is <blockquote>, useful for displaying cited text. Any URLs in description text will be auto-hyperlinked.

Is there a length limit on descriptions?

The maximum description length is 64K. The maximum display length is a few hundred words - longer descriptions will be truncated in list views. You can still see the full description on the bookmark page.

Tagging

What characters are allowed in tags?

Any characters except comma or whitespace are allowed.

Are tags case-sensitive?

Pinboard will display tags in the same case as they were entered, but tag search in Pinboard is not case-sensitive. Tags for 'apple', 'Apple' and 'APPLE' will all appear as the same tag. Tag auto-complete is case-aware (but should end up doing what you want).

Why can't I have spaces in my tags?

Multi-word tags pose special problems in formatting, editing, display and search. Rather than tackling these problems, we've chosen from the beginning to limit tags to non-whitespace characters only. If you have a use case that you feel requires multi-word tags, please talk to us.

How do I delete a tag?

Go to your page for that tag, click the 'edit' link at the top of the page, select 'all pages', and remove the tag. Once a tag has been removed from all your bookmarks it will disappear from your tag list, tag cloud and tag auto-complete.

How do I rename a tag?

Go to your page for bookmarks with the old tag, click the 'edit' link at the top of the page, select 'all pages', add the new tag, select 'all pages' again, and remove the old tag. Make sure you follow the steps in this order (add the new tag first, then remove the old).

Is there a way to have Pinboard auto-complete my tags?

You can turn tag auto-completion on or off on your settings page.

How can I get suggested tags?

Right now we have a simple algorithm for tag suggestions. When you bookmark a URL, we look at all the user tags for that URL and see if any overlap with tags you've already used. If so, we show those tags in the bookmark submission form.

Some users have asked for more extensive suggestions including tags they haven't already used. We're evaluating this for use on the site.

Can I see results for multiple tags?

See above.

Can I view only those bookmarks that don't contain a particular tag

There's no way to filter by tags in Pinboard. You can do this with our RSS feeds (as well as build more complicated tag queries) in Yahoo! Pipes.

Archiving

What is an archival account?

When you upgrade to an archival account, Pinboard will crawl and save a copy of every bookmark in your account. This copy will persist even if the original server goes down. Archiving also turns on full-text search for your account. You'll be able to search any HTML, PDF or text document by content.

How much does archiving cost?

Archiving is $25/year. Your signup fee counts towards your first year of archiving, so if you paid $10 to join Pinboard, you'll only have to pay $15 to turn the feature on.

Are there limits on how much I can archive?

There are no hard limits on the feature. We reserve the right to disable archiving and refund your fee if we feel we don't have the resources to crawl all your links, but we have never had to do this.

Will you archive all my bookmarks, or just new ones?

We will crawl all the bookmarks in your account.

Does archiving include my tweets?

Twitter archiving is available to all our users, not just those who subscribe to the archival feature.

Can I download my archived bookmarks? What format are they in?

Right now you can download your archived bookmarks by special arrangement (in other words, you email me and I make you a tarball). The bookmarks are stored one per folder, with a top-level manifest HTML file that gives you links to each. We're working on completely automating this process so you can download your archived data whenever convenient.

Are there pages you can't archive?

There are a number of pages that we're not able to save right now. Any site behind a paywall is inaccessible to our crawler. YouTube and Flickr go to some lengths to block crawlers, and we are unable to save those links properly. That said, we are able to save the vast majority of sites and are the only archiving site that saves full page content.

How long do I have to wait before I can search my bookmarks by content?

It can take up to 48 hours to build the initial full-text index for your account. Subsequent updates should be much quicker. You can view the status of full-text indexing on your account page.

Outside Services

I turned on delicious mirroring. Why don't I see all my delicious bookmarks?

Delicious mirroring uses RSS feeds, so it is not retroactive. If you'd like all your delicious bookmarks added to your Pinboard account, you'll need to use the import feature.

How far back does my Twitter archive go?

We start crawling your tweets the moment you enable the feature, so we will typically retrieve the most recent 30 or so. We're working on a version of Twitter archiving that will fetch your entire history (up to the Twitter-imposed limit of 3200 tweets).

Can you import bookmarks from private Twitter accounts?

Not yet.

How often do you check outside feeds?

It depends on the service. You can see the time we last checked outside services, and what time we will check them again, on your account page.

Can I set up Pinboard to automatically post to my weblog? To Twitter?

We don't support any kind of automated posting to outside services.

How can I sync my toread list with Instapaper?

There's no easy way to do this right now. I'd encourage you to contact Marco at Instapaper requesting the feature.

Account

What payment methods do you accept?

We support PayPal and Amazon Payments. We also send some invoices through Google Checkout. If you would like to sign up but have trouble paying through one or more of these services, please contact me.

How do I get a refund?

Pinboard accounts are fully refundable within three days of signup. Send me an email and I will issue a refund through the payment provider and close your account.

My payment failed, how can I redo it?

You can send me the balance due via PayPal or Amazon Payments. My address with both services is maciej@ceglowski.com. Include your username in the payment I'll make sure your account status gets updated appropriately.

How do I close my account?

Send me an email from the address we have on file for you and I'll be happy to close your account.

How can I change my username?

Send us an email with your current username, and what you would like it changed to.

How can I update my email address on file?

You can edit this and other personal information on your account page.

Can I buy a gift account for someone else?

Of course! Contact me and I'll be happy to send a pre-paid invitation in your name.

Search

What does the search engine index?

For regular accounts, the search engine indexes all titles, tags, and descriptions. If you have an archival account, you can also search by content (by clicking the 'full-text search' checkbox).

Can I use Boolean operators in search?

We don't have support for that right now.

How often is the search engine updated?

The search index updates every three minutes. Fulltext search is updated nightly.

Will search work in Japanese, Chinese or Korean?

Yes. Please email me if you spot any problems with search in any language.