2/5 Plinky emerged out of a personal need, I built the first version in 17 days to stop annoying my then new girlfriend now-fiancée Colleen.
When we first met I would send Colleen a barrage of links throughout the day: articles I found insightful, funny tweets (back when those were a thing), cute cat videos, or even recipes we could cook together. I may be an indie developer with lots of flexibility, but Colleen has a real job (and she’s very good at it).
3/5 Colleen was overwhelmed by how much internet I could consume, what we needed was a place to save links for later.
I tried saving links into a Notes file, but I would never remember to look at them. I started saving links into my Reminders app, but then my todos were swimming in a sea of links. I tried leaving tabs open in my browser, but then I never had those links on my phone when I needed them.
I built the first version of Plinky for us, but as I showed people the app they loved it.
4/5 People loved how fast links saved, they loved the design, and how simple Plinky was to use. Plinky isn't just an app, it's about a dozen apps and services so you can save links anywhere and everywhere. You get:
A Mac menu bar app to make saving easy.
Browser extensions so you can save links anywhere.
An API to build your own tools to save links.
Shortcuts support for powerful automations.
You can even save links with Zapier, on Android, or in Unread thanks to @johnbrayton.
5/5 This is just day one, as I continue to work on Plinky expect more features and more integrations.
A sneak peek of features to come: Link Reminders, Offline Reading, Full Text Article Search, a native Mac app, and plenty of unique ideas I've never seen any other link-saving apps build.
Already people have already saved thousands of links and the number keeps growing. Would you do me the honor of downloading Plinky, trying it out, and letting me know what you think?
@JetForMe A native Mac app is on the roadmap! Which you can view and vote on it and vote for it by opening plinky.app/open/roadmap on a device that has Plinky installed. (Or visit Settings > Contact Support > View Roadmap)
I'm gauging the features people really need, given the diversity of link-saving needs and workflows people have, but personally I'd love to have a dedicated Mac app, one that shines as a classic Mac experience beyond the current iPad app running on Mac. 🙂
@mergesort First of all, congrats on the launch! 🚀
To be honest though, the price feels pretty steep for an app like this. €45/year seems like a lot to me. Also the yearly price barely saves anything over the monthly price, so apart from using the 50% discount, I don't know why anyone would use the yearly option.
Just my thoughts! If enough people feel different and are willing to pay, I'm obviously wrong about the price being high. 😅
@stefandesu Perfectly understandable. Would you like be more interested in it for $€20 price it should be with the 50% discount? I'm launching with a discounted offer for early adopters because I truly believe that by the time your subscription renews €45/year will be a fair exchange for the value Plinky provides, especially as this is my full time job and I have a roadmap long enough to fill out the next year or two.
@mergesort this looks great, I’m new to link saving as of this year, been using Raindrop but it’s a little sluggish adding items at times, excited to try Plinky. This is maybe an oddball question, but are you at all considering letting folks pay for the apps, but self-host the storage/sync bits?
@ted Hey Ted, that's not a bad question at all! The answer is not yet, but also you may be waiting a long time for that. When I see Plinky in a few years there's an E2E option (knowing all the tradeoffs involved from a support perspective) and eventually the option to self-host. I understand that links are personal and don’t want to hold your data hostage, but that's all predicated on building features and Plinky succeeding though, which is why I can't make any promises on a timeline.
@mergesort
I suggest one more: setting a date after which the link is deleted. How often did I save links "to read as preparation for $thing" - the date of the thing passed and the links were still there, now useless.
@vik I've had an idea written down for a while to auto-archive links after a specified time period, for example 7, 30, or 90 days. Do you think that's something you'd be interested in?
@mergesort
I would wish to be able to specify a date. But your options would be a very good first step I would be very happy with.
But only if I can choose which links to save "forever" and which one get which deletion date.
@vik When you say specify a date do you mean getting to choose how many days, for example if you wanted the option to make it 17 days for whatever reason? If so that should be reasonably doable too, I just want to make sure that I understand the feature request.
@mergesort
This is correct.
Use case: As user, I want to specify a time span or date after which the bookmarked link is automatically deleted.
Usage example: I am interested in a concert at 11th August. There are some articles about the bands performing there. I bookmark these articles - but I know that I will not be interested to read this background information after the concert. So I would set the deleting delay to 12th August or about 90 days.
@vik I hadn't considered the idea of a date-specific auto-archive or delete option, you've got me thinking now and I really like it! I wrote all of this down and I like how it could come together, it's not my top priority at the moment but wouldn't be surprised if I get to it later this year. Thanks for the great idea!
@fillwe@mergesort I had the same question! Raindrop is fantastic — the fact that the entire content of every web-page and PDF that you saved is fully searchable and has a permanent copy is invaluable!
@eddyg@fillwe That's a great question. Raindrop is a great product, I've been a Raindrop user for years, but personally I think it's more so built for the archivist use case. I'm building Plinky to fit a diversity of use cases, from first save you can see that it saves the link and gets out of your way, rather than focusing on categorization right from the start. That's a perfectly valid approach but with all of the workflows I want to support I felt I needed a clean slate, and built Plinky.
@ashkendo Not dumb at all Ash. The answer is both and more, but I want to approach that gracefully.
I very much understand that these are two very different kinds of apps, so they require thought to build. Plinky’s foundation of customizability is a differentiator, I view read it later and archiving as two different kinds of tools, tools that I will build for with their own individual strengths, but thoughtfully to make that vision shine without clashing. Hope that helps, happy to expand!
@christianselig I truly agree with this, I want there to be more playful and personal apps, it's a core staple of what I'm trying to do with all of my apps. I genuinely love how Apollo was the premier example of how to take Apple's HIG and make another experience feel at home on iOS, but I also want to have software that provides choice and customizability to make an app my own, which is what I'm shooting for with Plinky. ❤️💙🧡
@marcoarment Dang, thank you Marco! Now I'm actually blushing in public waiting for a couple of souvlaki sticks, but would love to know what you think if you get a chance to try it out. 😅
@mergesort This looks interesting. Planning to do highlights? I guess this has it’s own sync backend and not iCloud? Also noticed this in the App Store image. I guess that should be iPad?
I hadn't had that request so I just added Highlights to the roadmap I have in Plinky. You can view it and vote for it by opening https://plinky.app/open/roadmap on a device that has Plinky installed. (Or visit Settings > Contact Support > View Roadmap)
Plinky has its own sync system and sync engine, unfortunately it would be near impossible or simple to build out Plinky's integrations if I used iCloud.
@mcelhearn@flargh Would you like be more interested in it for $20? I'm launching with a discounted offer because I truly believe that by the time your subscription renews $40/year will be a fair exchange for the value Plinky provides, especially as I work on this full time and have a propensity for shipping quickly with a roadmap long enough to fill out the next year or two. https://macaw.social/@mergesort/112412702503568595
@mergesort@flargh Honestly, I’m not interested in subscription apps. I have to pay so much for apps I need for my work - things like Zoom, Otter, Backblaze, etc - that paying yet another subscription for a simple utility is out of the question. I know the economics of app development, but subscriptions are killing apps. More and more users are getting subscription fatigue, and rightly so.
@mergesort@flargh I switched calendar apps recently because the one I was using increased the subscription by 50%, justifying it by talking about features that I don’t need.
@mcelhearn@flargh I get that, I'm not a huge fan of subscriptions myself, but the situation is what it is. I wish I could justify a lower price for the lifetime unlock, but the sad reality is that if I plan on supporting this app for years to come with all the features I'm planning to add I can't afford to charge much less. 😔
@niclake Would you mind force quitting the app or restarting phone if you haven't? Unfortunately building a whole app around the iOS share sheet has taught me that Apple's share sheet can be kind of buggy to set up, and almost always a restart of sorts fixes state issues like this.
@prsn I understand they may not be for everyone so you can turn them off in Settings. If you open the app and navigate to Settings > Behaviors, you can disable Sounds under the Accessibility preferences.
@mergesort Congrats on shipping 🚀 I will definitely test the app. Looks really useful. I noticed one small thing: The monthly price in the description and the one displayed in the app are different.
@tom_t_21 So sorry about that, I assume you mean the monthly price listed on the App Store or did you find it elsewhere? The monthly price change was a last minute decision so I completely goofed on updating the price in the App Store, will correct that and any other places you may have found it.
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