Usage

When you first get logged on, you'll probably want to add some bookmarks. If you've already exported bookmarks from a browser or other bookmarking service like Pocket, you can import your bookmarks in the settings.

Next, you can add some RSS feeds to always stay up-to-date with your favourite sites.

Check out the available keyboard shortcuts with Ctrl+? and start exploring the application.

Searching

Both the feeds as well as bookmarks pages have a search input in the nav bar which will do a case-insensitive search on the titles, descriptions and URLs of bookmarks and the title and feed item content (i.e. the article) of RSS items.

Filtering

Currently only the feeds page has a filtering mechanism. The Bookmarks will have a filtering mechanism to leverage your tags and categories soon too. Stay tuned!

On the feeds page, you can open the sidebar by using the ] button or pressing the Sidebar toggle button in the top right. There you can filter for unread items, or show/hide individual feeds.

RSS Feeds

To manager your RSS feeds in Briefkasten, go to "Settings" -> "Feeds". There you can add, edit, or delete RSS feed URLs.

When you add a new feed URL, we will initially fetch the last 10 items to add to your list. We will then queue up a background task to fetch new items every hour. To view new items, you can check out the Dashboard "New Items" section(s), or go to the feeds page directly. The feeds page will auto-update when tab away, and back to it, to show you the latest items. No manual refreshing necessary.

Import / Export

Briefkasten allows you to easily import and export your bookmarks. Visit "Settings" -> "User" and find the "Import / Export" section.

Export will generate an HTML file following the Netscape Bookmark File Format which is compatible with most browsers and bookmarking services. This is the same format that Firefox, Chrome, etc. use when exporting your bookmarks.

Import will accept an uploaded file, show you a preview of the first 10 items to make sure the parser has identified everything correctly, and then ask you to confirm before executing the import. Importing accepts two file types, the same Netscape bookmark format which we export, but also the Pocket export format to make migration easier.

Adding Bookmarks

There are a few options to add bookmarks. If you want to create a new bookmark entry, you have the following options.

Quick add

The quick add modal allows you to manually type in any desired information, including of course the URL to the website you wish to save. While saving the bookmark, we will fetch a current screenshot of the desired page and save it alongside the page details.

Open it by pressing the + button in the bottom right of the application or using the Alt+N keyboard shortcut.

Drag-n-Drop

In addition to manually typing in all the required information, you can simply drag and drop any URL onto the Briefkasten application page and we'll fetch the basic title, description, and page screenshot for you. Remember, you can manually edit any of those values later after it's been saved.

Alternatively, you can paste a URL into the app by simply focusing the page and pressing Ctrl+V. You'll then be prompted with the above modal to confirm the details before saving.