Update on Feb 01, 2025: Updated the iOS shortcut to properly encode URLs and descriptions, improving support for special characters.

Introduction

This page documents how I use the excellent self-hosted web-based Linkding bookmark manager on Apple iPhone and iPad (which I will collectively refer to as “iOS” moving forward.) You can use or adapt this information to improve your own iOS experience with Linkding or any other tool that consumes URLs, for both web-based tools as well as native apps via Apple Shortcuts.

Why?

Although it’s great that native iOS app Linkding client options exist, I prefer to use Linkding’s built-in web UI rather than native client apps for the following reasons:

1. When I use Linkding on any given platform (desktop PCs, Android, etc.), I always prefer to use its web UI so I can have a consistent experience across those platforms.
2. When adding or editing bookmarks, I personally find Linkding’s web UI to be faster to use than any native app I’ve tried when adding tags, editing other metadata, etc.
3. Searching and browsing existing bookmarks always works instantly, rather than needing to wait for a native app’s periodic or incremental sync process.

To that end, I’ve devised ways to invoke Linkding’s web views when both adding and editing bookmarks as well as searching and browsing existing bookmarks that feel faster and more frictionless to me than using native apps to perform those tasks.

How?

You can use either of these workflows independently, but they also work great together!

Adding and Editing Bookmarks

I’ve created the following Apple Shortcut that’s useful for adding and editing bookmarks using Linkding’s web view: Add to Linkding Shortcut

Once you access that link, you’ll see the following on iOS (the process also works similarly on Mac):

After you hit the “Get Shortcut” button, you’ll see this:

Finally, after hitting the “Set Up Shortcut” button, you’ll see this:

Enter your Linkding server in the text box as instructed, then hit the “Add Shortcut” button.¹

Now that the shortcut has been fully configured, there are several ways to invoke it when you’d like to add or edit a bookmark. Doing any of these actions will cause the shortcut to pop up a Linkding “add/edit” web view prepopulated with a relevant URL:

• Sharing any URL from any application to the shortcut using the standard iOS share button/share sheet
• When sharing a web page using the share sheet in Safari specifically, any text you select on the page will also be prepopulated into Linkding’s description field when adding a new bookmark (the description will not be overwritten if the bookmark already exists)
• Invoking the shortcut directly when a web page is visible on-screen, which is useful when the shortcut is configured to be triggered by the Action button on devices that have an Action button.²

The last method is my favorite: I hit the Action button while using Safari, and Linkding’s “add/edit” page appears with the URL prepopulated. I don’t have to leave the Safari app, and adding or editing a bookmark is frictionless.

Searching and Browsing Bookmarks

My goal for searching and browsing Linkding bookmarks in iOS was to mimic how I do that in desktop web browsers using search shortcuts.³

If you’re unfamiliar, the idea is that you can invoke a specific search engine of your choice by entering a search query directly in a browser’s address bar, prefixed with a keyword that you’ve configured, which will cause the search query to be sent to a corresponding search engine.

For example, when I press w <space> in Firefox’s address bar, the following UI appears, ready to send my subsequent search query directly to [W]ikipedia after I press <enter>:

iOS has no built-in way to set custom search engines in Safari, so how can this experience be replicated there?

Ironically, the answer is by using native apps.

Both xSearch and Keyword Search are apps that expose Safari extensions that allow search shortcuts to be configured and used in Safari (on both iOS and Mac with shared configuration!) in the same way that I described above for desktop browsers.

I happen to use xSearch. I won’t go into detail here about setting up xSearch itself; you can use xSearch’s own in-app guide for that.

After setting up xSearch, this is how to add your Linkding server as a custom “Engine” (you can get to this screen by hitting the “Add Engine” button that appears at the top right of xSearch’s “My Engines” tab):

The important configuration is:

• Picking a keyword (type it in the “Shortcuts” section, I use l for [L]inkding.)
• Specifying the following search engine URL, substituting your own Linkding server where appropriate: https://linkding.yourdomain.com/bookmarks?q=%s (You should leave the /bookmarks?q=%s suffix exactly as-is.)

If you prefer the Keyword Search app over xSearch, analogous configuration is nearly identical.

As you have likely surmised, the %s in the URL will be substituted with your search query when you prefix that query with your chosen keyword. Searches without prefixed keywords will be sent to your regular search engine.

Now that the xSearch app and your Linkding engine within it are both configured correctly, you can perform a search in Safari prefixed with your chosen keyword, and the rest of your search query will be sent to Linkding as though you had typed it in Linkding’s own search box.

For example, assuming your keyword is l, typing l #book in Safari’s address bar and pressing <enter> will search Linkding for the book tag.

Much faster than switching from Safari to some other app to search for a bookmark, right?

Because you’re viewing Linkding search results within Safari, tapping on a bookmark will obviously open that page within Safari. So, there will neither be a need to jump back to Safari from a native app, nor be stuck in an app’s integrated Safari web view that could be missing cookies for sites you’ve logged into within the Safari app.

In Conclusion

This system for using Linkding on iOS has been working well for me. I hope it can work well for you too, or at least give you ideas about how to better integrate web apps into your everyday iOS experience.