Ten Pinboard Features You Might Not Know About

Based on the email I get, I've compiled a list of Pinboard features that I think are useful but seem particularly easy to overlook. My hope is that at least one will come as a pleasant surprise to you.

I've separated each listing into a short description of what the feature does and an explanation of how to use it.

1. Linkroll and Tag Cloud

   Display a nicely formatted list of your recent bookmarks or tag cloud on any webpage.

   How to use it:

   Follow the instructions on the linkroll or tag cloud page.

2. Tab Sets

   What to do when you you want to quit your browser and have a zillion open tabs. Tab sets are not saved as bookmarks, but just as a list of windows and tabs that you can open again in any browser. You can store as many of them as you like and give them names.

   How to use it:

   Install one of our browser extensions. Click the save button to preview the tab set (giving you the chance to exclude certain windows and tabs, and give the tab set a name). You can see your tab sets at any time by clicking the 'tabs' link on your homepage.

3. Twitter Archiving

   Pull in all your tweets and favorites (up to the Twitter API limit of 3600) from up to three accounts, and configure various behaviors for each account. Fully searchable.

   How to use it:

   Turn on the 'Twitter OAuth' setting in the 'beta' section of the settings page. A 'twitter' tab will appear; click on it.

4. Dead Link Detection

   See a list of all your dead links.

   How to use it:

   You must have an archival account to use this feature. Go to your account page and you'll see a list of error types, click any one of these to see the offending bookmarks.

   You can tell our crawler to try downloading any bad link again by clicking the 'recrawl' arrow next to the error code.

5. Exact Dates

   See the exact date and time you saved something.

   How to use it:

   Mouse over the relative date ("saved X days ago") under any bookmark, or turn on the user setting to make Pinboard always show exact dates .

6. Tag Intersections

   Filter your bookmarks by multiple tags.

   How to use it:

   Go to one of your tag pages. Click the ⊕ icon next to any tag in the 'related tags' cloud on the right to add it as a filter. Works with up to three tags.

7. Quick Edit Interface

   Tag, edit and prune large numbers of bookmarks more efficiently.

   How to use it:

   Click the 'organize' link at the top of any page. Any changes you make wil lbe saved when you hit the navigation links, and you can view a preview of the bookmark in a separate frame. Click the little pin icon to get back to the regular site, or click 'view in context' to see the bookmark in its usual habitat in the timeline.

8. View Bookmarks Offline

Download the lastest 25 bookmarks on any Pinboard page in a format suitable for offline viewing.

How to use it:

Click the 'download' link at the top of the page to queue a download. You'll see a little 'In Progress' indicator until your download completes. Once it's ready, click the link and save the file on your local hard drive. It will unpack into a folder full of bookmark content. Open the web page in the folder to navigate.

9. Filter by Source

   View all bookmarks from a specific source, like twitter, instapaper, delicious, or your iphone.

   How to use it:

   Bookmarks that come from outside Pinboard get labelled with a blue 'from:service' link. Click on any of these to see or edit a list of bookmarks just from that source.

10. Keyboard shortcuts

    Navigate the site with hotkeys instead of clicking around.

    How to use it:

    Enable the preference in your settings, and memorize this handy chart.

Let me know if there are other non-obvious features I should add to this list!

—maciej on June 10, 2011