Saving Links

Bindle takes links from almost anywhere: a button in the app, the share sheet, your browser's toolbar, a drag from another app, a QR code, and even a sound played by another device. Every way in ends the same way. The link is cleaned, saved to your library, and synced to your other devices when they meet.

This chapter covers each way in, then what happens to a link once it is saved.

The Add Link Sheet

The Add Link sheet is the way to save a link by hand.

Where to find it: the + button (Add Link) in the library's toolbar, or Command-N with a keyboard. Mac: File > Add Link.

Once you stop typing, a preview appears under the address: the site's icon and the page's title. The title fills in the Title field for you, unless you have typed your own. The preview needs "Fetch site icons and titles" on in Settings > Privacy & Debug > Site info.

Choose Save to add the link, or Cancel to close the sheet. Save and Open in Reader stay dimmed until there is an address. Under the fields, Just Looking lists the links you opened without saving. See Just Looking.

Scan a QR Code

Choose Scan QR Code on the Add Link sheet, and point the camera at a code. The first code that holds a web link fills in the address, and the preview and title follow. Check them, then choose Save.

A code that holds anything else, such as Wi-Fi details or an email address, shows "That code doesn't hold a web link." for a few seconds, and the camera keeps looking. If camera access is off for Bindle, the scanner says so; turn it on in the system's Settings, or type the link instead.

The camera runs only while the scanner is open, and nothing it sees leaves your device.

Listen for a Link

Another device running Bindle can play a link as a short sound, a chirp (see Share Nearby). To hear it, choose Listen for Link on the Add Link sheet. Mac: It is also in Quick Add.

While Bindle listens, it shows a microphone level and "Listening for a link. Hold this device near the one playing it." A long link is sent in parts, so you may see "Heard 2 of 3 parts. Keep listening." Choose Stop Listening to give up.

A link that is heard fills in the address field. It is never saved on its own: check it, then choose Save. The first time, Bindle asks to use the microphone. Listening works between any two devices running Bindle, paired or not.

Open a Link Without Saving It

Sometimes you only want to read something once. Open in Reader shows a link in Bindle's reader right away without adding it to your library. Bindle calls this "just looking". It stays on this device, never syncs to your other devices, and is gone a day after you last opened it, unless you keep it.

Where to find it: Open in Reader in the Add Link sheet; in the share sheet of any app, Open in Bindle Reader View iPhone and iPad: in the list of actions under the apps Mac: in the Share menu; Mac: Open in Reader in Quick Add, or File > Open in Reader (Control-Command-N).

A link already in your library opens as itself instead.

While you're just looking, the reader works as usual for reading, listening, and sharing:

• iPhone and iPad: A strip at the bottom of the page says "Just looking" and "Not in your library · gone in 23 h", with Keep. Its × hides it while you read.
• Mac: Keep is in the toolbar, and "Just looking, 23 h left" is under the site's name.
• At the end of the article, "Worth keeping?" says when it goes, with Keep in Bindle and Let It Go.
• More offers Keep in Bindle, Open Website, Share, Copy Link, Listen, and Let It Go.

Star, Archive, Mark as Read, tags, reminders, highlights, Send To, and reading together come back once you keep the link. Your place in it is kept on this device only.

Keep It

Choose Keep, Keep in Bindle, or Keep from Just Looking. Bindle saves the link the usual way, with the page you already downloaded and your place in it, and it syncs from then on. The reader stays open on it.

Let It Go closes the reader and removes the link and its download at once.

Just Looking

The links you're just looking at are listed under Just Looking in the Add Link sheet, newest first, each with the hours it has left: as rows, or as cards when the library is a grid. Choose one to read it again, which starts its day over. Swipe a row to Keep or Remove it, or use the buttons on a card. Mac: File > Just Looking lists them too, with Keep All and Clear Just Looking.

Bindle holds up to 20. Opening one more removes the oldest, except one open in the reader.

Paste a Link

If a link is on the clipboard, you can save it in one step.

Mac: Choose Paste Link in the library's toolbar, or File > Save Link from Clipboard (Shift-Command-V). Bindle saves the first web link in what you copied, and a note says "Saved to Bindle", "Already in Bindle, back in Unread", or "No link on the clipboard".

On iPhone and iPad, open the Add Link sheet and paste into the address field.

The Share Sheet

From Safari, Mail, News, or any app that can share a link, choose Share, then Bindle. A small sheet, Save to Bindle, opens over the app you are in.

When the link or its text mentions a place, the sheet says "This link mentions a place. Add it to find the link when you're nearby." and Add Place offers it.

Choose Save. The sheet says "Saving…", then "Saved to Bindle", or "Already saved; moved to the top" for a link you saved before, and closes. Bindle doesn't need to be running. While the sheet first reads what you shared, it says "Reading the link…".

If the shared item has no web link, the sheet says "There is no web link in what was shared." If Bindle has never been opened on this device, it asks you to open Bindle once to finish setup. When saving fails, the sheet says why and Save works again, so you can try once more.

Mac: The share sheet works the same way from the Share menu or button in any app, with Cancel and Save at the bottom of the sheet.

Open in Bindle Reader View opens the link in Bindle's reader without saving it. See Open a Link Without Saving It. iPhone and iPad: It is in the list of actions under the row of apps; if it isn't there, choose Edit Actions at the end of the list and add it. Mac: It is in the Share menu next to Bindle.

Safari Extension

Bindle's Safari extension puts a Bindle button in Safari's toolbar, on iPhone, iPad, and the Mac.

Turn It On

• iPhone and iPad: Open the Settings app, then Apps > Safari > Extensions > Bindle, and turn it on. Allow it on every website so the button can show which pages are saved.
• Mac: In Bindle, Settings > Browsers & Shortcuts > Safari shows whether Bindle in Safari is On or Off. Choose Open Safari Extension Settings to turn it on in Safari, and allow it on every website.

Save From the Toolbar

Choose the Bindle button in Safari's toolbar. A small popup shows:

• The page's address.
• "Already in Bindle. Saving again moves it to the top." when you saved the page before.
• Title, filled in with the tab's title. Change it if you like.
• Tags, comma separated.
• Add to Up Next, a checkbox that also adds the link to the end of your queue.
• Cancel and Save.

After Save, the popup says "Saved to Bindle", or "Already saved; moved to the top". Mac: It closes a moment later by itself.

See What's Saved

The Bindle button shows whether the page you're on is in your library. It is outlined for a page you haven't saved and filled in for one you have. It looks the page up on your device only, and only on sites where you allowed the extension.

Context Menu and Shortcut

Mac: In Safari on the Mac you can also save without the popup:

• Right-click a link and choose Save Link to Bindle.
• Right-click the page and choose Save Page to Bindle.
• Press Control-Shift-S to save the page you're reading.

These save at once. A check mark shows on the Bindle button for a few seconds, or "!" if something went wrong, with the reason when you point at the button.

iPhone and iPad Safari don't offer context menus or shortcuts to extensions, so there you use the toolbar button.

The extension reads no page content and keeps no addresses. Each address goes only to Bindle on the same device.

Chrome and Chromium Extension

Mac: Bindle has an extension for Google Chrome and Chromium on the Mac. It works like the Safari extension: a toolbar button with the same popup (Title, Tags, and Add to Up Next), a button that shows whether the page is saved, Save Link to Bindle and Save Page to Bindle in the right-click menu, and Control-Shift-S.

In Chrome, the right-click items and the shortcut open the popup to confirm what happened: a green check and "Saved to Bindle" (or "Already saved"), with the page's title, closing after a moment. A problem shows a red mark and the reason, and stays until you choose Close.

Set It Up

The extension comes with Bindle, but it isn't in the Chrome Web Store yet, so you add it to the browser by hand once. Open Settings > Browsers & Shortcuts > Chrome and Chromium in Bindle.

1. Make sure the browser shows Connected. If it says Not connected, choose Connect. If it says Needs access, choose Allow Access and confirm the folder Bindle shows you. Not installed means that browser isn't on this Mac.
2. Open Add the Extension and follow its steps. In short: open the browser's extensions page (the button copies chrome://extensions and brings the browser forward, so you can paste it into the address bar), turn on Developer mode, choose Load unpacked, and pick the Bindle Chrome Extension folder that Download Chrome Extension… saved.
3. Check that the extension's ID matches the one shown in the steps. With any other ID it can't reach Bindle.
4. Pin Bindle from the browser's extensions menu, so its button stays in the toolbar.

Connecting writes one small file into the browser's own folder that lets it reach Bindle, and nothing else. Addresses go only to Bindle on this Mac.

Drag and Drop

Drag a link from another app and drop it on Bindle's window to save it. This works from a browser's address bar or a link on a page, from Finder or Files (a saved web location), from Mail, Notes, and other apps where links sit behind words, and from plain text that holds web addresses.

• Drop it anywhere in the window: on the list, the grid, or an open article. iPad: Split View or Slide Over makes this easy.
• Drop several at once and Bindle saves each one, up to 100 in one drop. A bigger drop saves the first 100 and says so. For more, use Import (see Moving Your Library).
• On iPad and the Mac, drop on a tag in the sidebar to save the links with that tag, or on Up Next to save them at the end of your queue.
• With Up Next open, drop between two links in the list to queue them at that spot.

A short note says what happened: "Saved 3 links", "Already saved", "Saved 2 links, 1 already saved", or "No links in that drop". Only http and https links are saved.

PDFs and pictures dropped from Files, Finder, or Photos are saved as files (see PDFs and Images). A picture dragged out of a web page keeps its web address and is saved as a link.

Dragging works the other way too: drag a link out of Bindle into Safari, Notes, Mail, or another app. See Your Library.

PDFs and Images

Bindle saves PDFs and pictures as well as links. Choose the + button above the list, then Import PDF or Image, and pick one or more files.

Mac: On the Mac, you can also choose File > Import PDF or Image (Shift-Command-O).

You can also share a PDF or picture to Bindle from another app, such as Files or Photos: choose Share, then Bindle, then Save. It shows in your library the next time Bindle opens.

Other ways in:

• Drag a PDF or picture from Files, Finder, or Photos and drop it on Bindle's window, as you would a link. See Drag and Drop.
• iPhone and iPad: In Files, touch and hold a PDF or picture, then choose Share > Bindle, or Open In > Bindle where the app offers it.
• Mac: In Finder, Control-click a PDF or picture and choose Open With > Bindle.

Bindle saves PDFs up to 200 MB and JPEG, PNG, HEIC, AVIF, GIF, and WebP images up to 50 MB. A PDF takes its own title when it has one, otherwise the file's name. A PDF locked with a password can't be saved.

A saved file sits in your library beside your links, with its first page, "PDF" and its page count, or "Image". Star, tag, archive, remind, and collect it as you would a link. Saving the same file again finds the one you have.

Open a File

Tap a file, or its Open button, to see it. A PDF's pages scroll top to bottom, and the page you're on shows as you scroll. Pinch to zoom, on a page or a picture.

iPhone and iPad: The reader's quick actions button is here too, with your chosen actions: Share shares the file, Start Over goes back to the first page, Listen and Scroll Hands-Free work as in the reader, and actions that need an article (Open Website, Copy Link, Appearance) are dimmed. See Quick Actions.

Tap the page to hide everything but the PDF, and tap again to bring the buttons back. To have files open that way, choose More (the three dots), then Minimal Mode; it's the same setting as the reader's Minimal Mode.

The file opens where you left off, on each of your devices, and is marked read when you reach its last page.

Search finds words inside a saved PDF, and inside pictures and scanned pages once they've been read. See Read Text in Images.

Listen to a File

Choose Listen to hear a PDF or picture read aloud, from the page you're on, with the same voices, speeds, and player as an article. The pages turn as it reads, and your place moves page by page. Listen is also in a file's menu, its details, and Up Next, and listening goes on into a file, or out of one, with the screen locked.

If a picture or scanned page hasn't been read yet, Bindle reads it first, even on battery, and says "Reading the text" with how many pages are done. A file with no words to read says so.

Choose Scroll Hands-Free to have the pages scroll by themselves, with the same speeds, look-away pause, and scroll bar as the reader. Each page passes in about the time its words take to read at your speed, and a page with few words passes briskly. iPhone and iPad: Choose Auto or Tilt on the scroll bar to switch to Tilt to Scroll. Scrolling yourself holds it for a moment, and it stops at the end of the last page. See Hands-Free Scrolling.

On Your Other Devices

The file stays on the device you saved it on and moves to your other devices when they're on the same network with Bindle open, the way books do. Until it arrives, a device shows the file's title and a cloud mark, and opening it says which device saved it. Choose Try Again once that device is nearby. Files move only between your own devices and are checked as they arrive, so a device can't be handed the wrong file.

Links Inside an Article

While you read in Bindle's reader, you can save a link from the article without leaving it.

• iPhone and iPad: Touch and hold the link. Save to Bindle is first in the menu.
• Mac: Right-click the link and choose Save to Bindle.

A note says "Saved 1 link" or "Already saved".

Other Ways In

• Siri, Shortcuts, widgets, and Control Center. Save a link, or the one on the clipboard, without opening Bindle. See Shortcuts, Widgets, and Focus.
• On the Mac. A Quick Add panel on a keyboard shortcut from any app, Save to Bindle in the Services menu, the menu bar item, and AppleScript. See Bindle on the Mac.
• Imports. Bring in a whole library from Pocket, Instapaper, Raindrop.io, Omnivore, GoodLinks, browser bookmarks, or plain text. See Moving Your Library.

What Happens When You Save

Cleaning the Link

Before a link is saved, Bindle tidies it on your device, with no request to any server:

• Tracking is removed. Bindle uses the ClearURLs rules, a public list of the tracking bits sites add to addresses, and always strips utm_ parameters, fbclid, and gclid.
• Redirect wrappers are unwrapped. A link such as a Google or Facebook redirect becomes the page it points to.
• AMP links are unwrapped to the page they copy.
• Some shops' long product addresses are shortened to the product's own address, so the same product is one link.
• Small differences that don't matter are evened out, so HTTPS://Example.com:443 and https://example.com/ are the same link.

Later, when Bindle saves the page's offline copy, it may learn where the page really lives (after a redirect, or from the page's own address). From then on, Bindle opens, shares, and copies that address.

A link that was cleaned says so: its details show Cleaned under the address. Tap it to see what changed, such as "Tracking removed. Saved from ..." with the address you saved, or "Opens at the page's own address. Saved as ..." See Your Library.

Saving Again Brings a Link Back

Each page is one link in your library. Save a page you saved before, from anywhere, and Bindle doesn't make a second copy. Instead it brings the existing link back: it moves to the top of your library, it is marked unread, and if you had archived it, it comes out of the archive. Its notes, tags, and highlights stay.

If the same page was saved on two devices before they met, the two become one link when they sync. You don't need to do anything.

Fetched Right Away

A link you just saved on this device gets its picture, icon, title, and offline copy right away, even on battery, so it is ready to read when you are. (On cellular, the offline copy follows the "Also download on cellular" setting.) Links saved on your other devices wait for a good moment, such as when this device is charging. See Offline and Storage.

Share Nearby

Share Nearby hands a link to someone, or to another device, close by. It works between any devices, not only your own.

Where to find it: a link's details, under More (the circle with three dots), or the link's context menu. iPhone and iPad: In the context menu it is under More.

The sheet shows the link's icon, title, and site, then its QR code ("Scan with a camera"), and a row of tiles:

The line under the tiles says what to do next. While the sound plays, it says how long one pass takes. The sound plays only when you choose it.

A link that is too long to send by sound shows why. Anyone can scan the QR code with a phone's camera, and it opens the link in their browser. Making the code and the sound uses no network.