Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and videos you save?

Posted by Cenga387 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @04:59PM
from the ask-hn dept.

Hi HN. This is my first post here and I would like to hear your experience on how you keep track of all the useful resources you save online. I constantly keep saving things that I find useful such as articles, papers, YouTube talks and other resources in bookmarks and open tabs (tabs are usualy reminders for me to come back to something, but I very rarely do).

More than once I ended up redoing research that I had already done because the resource I saved was burried somewhere in my bookmarks or tabs. I’m building something in this space and I would like to hear what actually works for you and how do you manage this.

What do you use today for things you want to come back to? And when you are looking for something you saved, do you actually manage to find it easily?

Also, what are some tools that you tried, but dropped eventually, and why?

I’ll post a summary of what I hear. If anyone’s up for a 20-minute call to go deeper, my email is in my profile.

( 10 comments | on HN )

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by codingdave on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:03PM (#50408468)

You are starting from a false assumption. Not everyone loses track of such things. Not everyone compiles lists and tabs of such things to begin with.

It sounds like you are trying to find a solution for an existing (but flawed) solution... instead of asking: What problem am I trying to solve that makes me collect all this stuff in the first place?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by Cenga387 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:13PM (#50408552)

Well for me the problem lies in that I'm in the middle of researching something, and I find a resource that would be useful for something that I would do later. But that later is days or weeks away, and when I need the thing I saved it is often very hard to find. When you need something you saw a while ago, do you just search for it again instead?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by toomuchtodo on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:18PM (#50408589)

Zotero and Karakeep. Happy to work through your workflow with you.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by Cenga387 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:22PM (#50408616)

I've tried Zotero, but I found its UI to be very outdated. Never heard of Karakeep though. Could you tell me more about it?

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by toomuchtodo on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:23PM (#50408625)

https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by Cenga387 on Saturday November 07, 2026 @05:28PM (#50408646)

Thanks. I'll check it out

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by silverFork on Saturday November 07, 2026 @08:48PM (#50409788)

Exactly like you do but sometimes capturing some screen shot or save the text with a good title hoping to use it again and never do in reality because I either remember things or things change so fast that all information becomes useless before needing it again. If it is recipe of something that I would forget while I am doing it, I write it down. I typically look it up again unless it was a needle in a hay stack.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by Cenga387 on Sunday November 08, 2026 @08:17AM (#50413032)

Oh my God, don't make me start on screenshots. My gallery has thousands and I used maybe 5% of them for something useful. Problem with them is they get burried in other pictures and it just becomes a graveyard

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by cyberrock on Sunday November 08, 2026 @02:49AM (#50411232)

I use Karakeep and started using Archivebox with custom (vibe coded) plugins. For example, if I see a 3D print on Printables or Makerworld, the page will be saved with the models, so I don't end up with dozens of STL/3MFs without any accompanying context.

It sounds like you might be looking to start a similar project, in which case I think you should look at those two programs and make one with a better UI/UX, because they can be a bit rough. In an ideal world this would be a feature built into web browsers.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles, papers and... by Cenga387 on Sunday November 08, 2026 @08:12AM (#50412986)

That's an interesting use case. I'll take a look at Archivebox. I noticed that a lot of similar tools have very outdated UI/UX and feel a bit clunky.

Our tool is in free beta right now. If you are down to try it, I can send over the link

[ Parent | on HN ]