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Bookmark manager: bmm
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bmm
is a slick CLI/TUI bookmark manager that’s all about speed and simplicity. The project aims to give you super-quick bookmark access and management without the bloat you didn’t ask for or the sluggish performance that even your old laptop fans judge you for.
Where bmm shines
I’ve recently been involved in a discussion on Lemmy where someone didn’t know that such a tool existed and couldn’t understand the need for it. So let’s look at why bmm exists and who it’s for:
- You’re a multi-browser person. One bookmark list to rule them all. No more juggling imports, exports, or half-working sync features between browsers.
- You live in a terminal all day. You’re already using tools like fzf, ripgrep, rofi, tmux, and friends; adding a bookmark manager you can script is a natural fit. bmm exposes everything via subcommands (list, search, save, tags, tui, etc.), so it composes nicely.
- Your browser bookmarks are unusable. You can import from browser exports and simple json/txt lists, then manage everything outside the browser.
- You care more about speed than encyclopedic features. The author originally used buku and wrote bmm specifically to replicate the subset of features they actually needed, but with much faster search over a large bookmark set.
- You want a simple TUI for browsing. bmm tui gives you a lightweight terminal UI where you can search bookmarks, list tags, and view tagged bookmarks using vim‑style keys.
No browser sidebars, no sync weirdness, just your own local DB.
I already use buku, why should I even consider bmm?
buku is mature, feature-rich, and very polished. It’s like a Swiss Army bookmark tool but that comes with complexity and slower performance as your database grows.
bmm on the other hand may not fetch tags and titles from the web for example, but it’s simpler with a script-friendly workflow.
I use Rofi
for so many things that it may have became the control tower of my laptop. So I naturally implemented buku in Rofi in the past, but some features where not that smooth to include. With bmm, everything just works.
Here are the main bmm commands so you can imagine how this can easily be used in Rofi:
| Action | Command | Options |
|---|---|---|
| List bookmarks | bmm list | -u <pattern> to look for pattern match against URIs |
-d <pattern> to look for pattern match against titles | ||
-t <pattern> to look for pattern match against tags (note that this one should be an exact match) | ||
-f json to list in json format | ||
-f delimited to list in format <URI>, <Title>, <Tags> | ||
| Perform a looser term-based search | bmm search <term> | Match --format delimited as output format |
| Create a new bookmark | bmm save -e <URI> | --title and --tags to populate these fields as well |
-e to call your preferred text editor | ||
| Remove a bookmark | bmm delete <URI> | --yes to skip the confirmation |
You can also use the TUI of bmm with bmm tui as well if that’s more your thing.
Conclusion
If your brain lives in terminals and your muscle memory is full of hotkeys and aliases, bmm is a delightful bookmark companion: fast, focused, and friendly. For heavy lifters with rich metadata needs and deep integration, buku still holds court.
Integrating with Rofi turns bookmarks into a quick launcher that’s actually fun and efficient to use :)
Nonetheless, if you’re already happy with buku’s feature buffet and rely on the exotic stuff (encryption, fancy tag flows), I’d recommend to keep it.
More food for thoughts? Check other posts about: #Cli
Thanks for your read. Hope it's been useful to you.
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