Bookmarks have evolved into Saves

Question

Update Oct 6

Maintenance is complete: all bookmarks have been migrated to Saves across all network sites, including Stack Overflow. All saves, saved lists, private notes, and bookmarks are now available in Saves.

Update #2 Oct 5

Site is stable again.

Saves is enabled again for all users network wide. Your saves, saved lists, private notes, and migrated bookmarks should be available to you now. Bookmarks that were made during the outage period will be unavailable until we finish migrating tonight.

All bookmarks should migrate tonight. Until then, sites are either fully migrated or not migrated. The only exception is Stack Overflow which is still partially migrated with 360k of 14mil bookmarks migrated.

We have a maintenance window planned starting at 00:00 UTC. If all goes as expected, it should be done by 02:00 UTC.

Update Oct 5

Saves has been temporarily disabled network-wide due to some site performance problems. These problems didn't appear until partway through migrating existing bookmarks into saves. We've temporarily reverted to Bookmarks.

• All saves, private notes, saved lists, and migrated bookmarks are unavailable. They are still saved in the database and will be available again when we turn Saves back on.
• All unmigrated bookmarks are currently available while Saves is disabled and Bookmarks is turned on. When we turn Saves on again, we'll resume the migration.

The migration was partially applied and will resume once we've fixed the performance issues and turned Saves back on.

• Some network sites were completely migrated, and your bookmarks were successfully turned into saves in the "For later" list. These migrated saves are unavailable until Saves is turned back on.
• Some network sites were not yet migrated at all, and your bookmarks are untouched. These bookmarks are available as they were before the Saves launch.
• Stack Overflow was the only site partially migrated
  • Around 360k bookmarks were turned into saves
  • Around 14mil bookmarks are still bookmarks

We will post updates on this Meta post as well as on Stack Status.

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Update Oct 4

Saves is now officially live on Stack Overflow and across Stack Exchange sites! The migration process will take some time to process as there are millions of bookmarked questions to migrate over. If you’re not seeing any questions you previously bookmarked, that means they haven’t been processed yet.

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TL;DR: We're always working to make knowledge more accessible and easier to reuse, so we're excited to announce that we're making some feature updates to facilitate that. Later this quarter, Bookmarks are being renamed to Saves, as well as getting a suite of upgrades to make the feature more useful and robust.

To better understand how the community reuses knowledge, we've conducted a study on bookmarking habits, asked in the general survey how users interact with saved content, and looked through Meta posts to better understand how the Bookmarks feature is used and what needs we can serve better.

In the survey, 62% of respondents reported saving content for future use. One of the surprising uses we learned about was users creating an ad-hoc to-do list with their bookmarks. We also made use of Meta to look through community requests, including requests for better organization, being able to save answers, and even community-supported projects to add notes to your saved content. We felt we had enough feedback to seriously upgrade this experience and build out those desired paths with native support.

An overview of the new features you'll see with Saves:

• The ability to save answers
• The ability to create and manage custom lists to better organize saved content
• The ability to create private notes on saved posts
• The in:saves search operator (which only shows your own saved posts)

Here we get to show off the new dedicated tab on your profile page, which serves to increase visibility of the new knowledge reuse tools. On the left, you'll see the new "For later" section, which is where saved content defaults to. This was inspired by those users who used bookmarking as a way to create a to-do list for later site activities – but the sorting fun doesn't end there.

Not only can you create multiple saved lists, but now you can also leave specific private notes for each saved question or answer. Use this as you see fit – collect thoughts, remind yourself why you saved a post in the first place, or draft responses. These notes are private to you, as are all of your lists and saves.

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FAQs

What will happen to my existing bookmarks?

We will be migrating over your existing bookmarks into the default “For later” Saves list. Once we enable the Saves feature, the migration process will take some time to process as there are millions of bookmarked questions to migrate over. If you’re not seeing any questions you previously bookmarked, that means they haven’t been processed yet.

What sites will the Saves feature be available on?

The Saves feature will be available network-wide on Stack Overflow and the Stack Exchange sites. However, Stack Overflow for Teams is not included in the initial rollout.

Can I save a post to multiple lists?

Currently, we are only allowing a post to be saved to a single list.

Will my saved posts and lists be public?

Nope! When we launch, all of the saved posts, custom lists, and private notes you create will be private moving forward. The existing Bookmarks tab on your network profile page will also be rebranded to Saves and made private.

Are you adding any new badges?

Absolutely! With the ability to save answers now, we will be adding two new badges for you to earn: Favorite Answer (Silver Badge) and Stellar Answer (Gold Badge), awarded when answers are saved by 25 and 100 users, respectively. The badge list will be updated to reflect these new additions.

What happens to the existing badges I’ve earned with the previous bookmarks feature?

We will be carrying over the existing badge progress associated with the Favorite Question and Stellar Question badges.

Can moderators see my saved posts and private notes?

Moderators will not be able to see or interact with your saved posts and private notes.

What happens if a post I saved has been deleted?

We will be preserving the existing behavior: If you have the access to moderator tools privilege, you will be able to see deleted posts in your saved lists. If you haven't earned this privilege yet, you will only be able to view deleted posts that you have authored.

What changes will be made to search?

We are removing the ability for users to search other users’ saved posts. The current search operators inbookmarks:mine and inbookmarks:<userid> will no longer yield any results. Users can now search their own saved posts using the in:saves search operator. The Help Center page on searching will be updated to reflect this change.

What happens to my saved posts if I have multiple accounts that need to be merged together?

If you have saved posts in both accounts, your saved lists and posts will be merged together when the accounts are merged.

What changes will be made to the user profile and network profile pages?

On your user profile page, the Bookmarks section under Activity > Summary will be hidden now that we have a prominent menu item and Saves will be private. Additionally, the Bookmarks tab on the network profile pages will also be hidden as we re-evaluate how this will work with answers being supported now. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and will provide future updates on this.

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We're really excited to address so many requests as part of this upcoming upgrade. Let us know what you think of the new features!

Answer 1

bugstatus-completed

Pressing "Cancel" after going to "Add private note" leaves a yellow div behind that doesn't go until the page is reloaded.

Reproduced on Firefox 105 on Windows 10, and Chrome 106 on Android 13.

Answer 2

bugstatus-completed

Editing/renaming the list for the second time (without refreshing the page) shows the old name:

Similarily, deleting the list after renaming it shows a toast message with the old name:

Answer 3

The proposed changes are neat, but I think you guys had a few changes leak out to production a bit early. The related badges for bookmarked questions (to be "saved" questions) currently have their descriptions changed from "bookmarked" (previously "favorited") to "saved". This has its own dedicated bug report.

This in concert with an out-of-nowhere design change to the Bookmark icon:

Previous	New

... And the part where the /user/saves endpoint is available to us suggests that there are some commits leaking out that you didn't intend.

Were any these intentional? If not, I figured you would want to know that we're seeing these changes when we don't yet expect to.

Answer 4

bug character-limit spelling status-review

If you go to your Saves tab and attempt to save a note longer than 500 characters, it shows this:

However, it is possible to save a note longer than 500 charaters characters by simply saving the note (in "For Later") this way:

• Click "Manage" after saving an answer.
• Write a lengthy essay into the private note space.
• Save.

If you try to edit the note at the appropriate page after saving the note this way, it will show the toast notification with the error, so we have inconsistency and typos going on.

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feature-request character-limit design

Since the note is limited to 500 characters, could we also add a "Characters left" counter at the bottom as we do with comments, since it would help keep track and alert you when you're about to overfill the note space?

Answer 5

I'd love to have Markdown integration with my saves. Like if I type a snippet from the title of something I'd saved:

• [sitemap paradox] I'd like it to create a link to The Sitemap Paradox
• [position in google] I'd like it to create a link to What are the best ways to improve a site's position in Google?

One reason I save questions is so that I can suggest them as references in comments on other questions.

Answer 6

feature-request

In SOpt I have 252 bookmarks saved posts.

I want to move them from For Later to one of My Lists. Currently, I have two options to accomplish that:

Option 1

• Go to my profile's Saves page
• Look for the post I want to move, which is a tedious process, as there are 9 pages of saved posts. Even using different sort options, it's not always straighforward to find it
• After finding the post in the list, I can move it using the menu:

• Repeat it for every post I want to move

Option 2

• Go to the post's page (usually searching for in:saves some criteria to find the post)
• Click on the Save icon twice (once to unsave it, once to save it again, so the "Manage" link is displayed), and then click on "Manage" to move it to the desired List
• Repeat it for every post I want to move

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Doing that for 252 posts is... not feasible. Can we have a better way to accomplish that?

Perhaps having some way to filter posts directly in the profile's Saves page, and then select them and move all at once (as suggested here).

Answer 7

feature-request

When using the keyboard to select a list item after Move to... (for example, pressing s) the drop-down list (DDL) puts the first list starting with the desired letter at the bottom of the DDL.

However, if I've pressed s, it would be convenient that the first item be placed at the top of the DDL, because I want to be looking at lists starting with s. (This way extra scrolling or keystrokes can be avoided.)

Answer 8

My list name clearly isn't empty, however I can't save it, because it is empty.

I know these characters encode to a zero-width joiner, so I'm technically a bit cheating, but either the error message isn't correct here, as one can clearly see 5 characters in the box, or this just needs to be parsed as plain text before checking on the length of the input.

Answer 9

bugstatus-review

The drop down lists of the "Save to" and "Move to" dialogs are presented in list ID order and not alphabetical order

After clicking the Saves button, the Saves list is presented in alphabetical order in the left hand navigation panel.

However, the list of Saves in the drop down lists of the "Save to" and "Move to" dialogs are not presented in alphabetical order. Instead, they are presented in list ID order.

To see the list ID for a particular list, click on a Saves list in the left hand navigation panel and look at the last number of the URL in the address bar. It is then trivial to compare those IDs with the list order in the drop down lists of the two dialogs.

I suspect that this may have been working correctly at some time and this bug has been introduced recently. I believe that another answer to this question shows that these drop down lists were sorted alphabetically at some point.

This bug may be connected to this bug report about no way to add a post to an empty Saves list.

Answer 10

What happens if a post I saved has been deleted?

We will be preserving the existing behavior: If you have the access to moderator tools privilege, you will be able to see deleted posts in your saved lists. If you haven't earned this privilege yet, you will only be able to view deleted posts that you have authored.

What happens (on sites where I don't have the access to mod tools privileges) to my private notes if a post I saved has been deleted? Will I still be able to access those notes, or will they be hidden too?

Answer 11

support

Community wiki posts are shown differently than they are in other lists. Is that on purpose? Most questions in Saves show the timestamp, but for community wikis, it's just "Community wiki [author]":

while that question on the Following tab shows only the timestamp of asking:

and other questions in the Saves tab do show the asking timestamp:

Answer 12

feature-request

After clicking Move to... focus should be set on the drop down list in the next dialogue. (Currently focus is still kept on the background page.)

Answer 13

bug responsive-design mobile-safari status-completed

Managing the saves does not work in the mobile version of Safari (tested on an iPhone SE 2020 with iOS 15.7). I can open the menu on a saved item, but tapping on any of the entries (Unsave, Move to..., Add private note) has no effect.

Answer 14

feature-request
Can it be made more obvious that Manage is an actual button?

In this screenshot you see me hovering over the Manage button, only then it becomes apparent that it is in fact a button.

In this screenshot it is obvious that "For Later" is a link, and it is rather intuitive to click on an "x" to make things close, but "Manage" here is formatted pretty similar to the rest of the text in the banner, and therefore hard to distinguish as a button that does something.

Answer 15

There's a tooltip to notify users of this new feature. On all sites in the network, it links to https://meta.stackexchange.com/help/saves - can it please link to the site's own help center, to avoid a lot of lost souls ending up asking off-topic questions here?

Answer 16

I like this feature, however, the code needs a callback when all ads have loaded, or, if the height is fixed, a wrapper around the ad. The page moves and makes it look unsightly:

Answer 17

feature-request

There is currently no way to check which list a saved post is in (this has already been reported in this other answer and this other answer to this question).

It would also be useful to have this information/functionality from the Search Results page.

For example, I was looking for a question about "comments" that I had saved with the word "comments" in the title. So, I searched for "in:saves comments".

Instead of the list of posts displayed in the current Search Results page which gives me no idea in which Saves list the relevant post was saved, I suggest something like below (which is similar to the view displayed when clicking the "All saves" button on the Saves page.

Suggested improvements

Please add information about which Saves list a post is saved in to the Search Results page.

In addition, it would also be useful to add the three vertical dots menu button with relevant actions.

Answer 18

feature-request Manage (add, remove, rename, default, public) lists on network profile, to be inherited on all sites.

I expect to want the same kinds of lists (For later, Reference, etc.) on all SE sites. It looks like I'll have to set them up on each site profile individually. Then I'll have to remember to do that whenever I join another site.

I'd rather set them once and maybe be able to override them on any one site. The network profile already provides an inheritance system for profile info, so perhaps it could do the same for list preferences.

Answer 19

support

What will happen to the timeline of old questions after bookmarks evolve into Saves?

Let's take a look at one of my old questions' timeline (with vote summaries):

Will the word "Bookmark" under comment column change to "Saves" for questions which were posted before the announcement of Saves?

Also, how will the timeline look (w.r.t. Saves feature) for new questions after Saves feature gets implemented?

Since Saves is also applicable to answers, how will the timeline of answers look like (w.r.t. Saves feature)? Will it be similar to that of timeline of new questions?

Answer 20

support

Can staff members really not see the Saves of a user?

tanj92 said this in their comment:

@RandomPerson regarding your question re: whether staff can see saved posts for all users, the short answer is no, not from the new user interface. Only users who are logged into their own accounts can view their saved posts.

Does this really mean that no one other than the user can see the user's Saves? Or can a staff member with moderator privilege see the Saves of a user?

Also what do you exactly mean by "not from the new user interface"? I have no idea of which interface you're talking about. So, if a new interface is built, can staff members see the Saves of a user?

Answer 21

feature-request

Could you make the toast messages more explicit with list names¹ (e.g., double quotations, etc.) to avoid miscommunication? I would prefer to see something like:

The "List name" list has been deleted [from your lists].

instead of:

• Styling has been deleted from your lists.
• this has been deleted from your lists.²

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¹ _{This should apply to all toast messages that include the name of a list.}

² _{this is a keyword in several programming languages, so it's not unlikely that someone might have a list named "this".}

Answer 22

bugstatus-declined

The "New list" input box does not appear after selecting "Create new list" on the new "Save to" dialog in at least one situation, as described below.

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1. select "Triage" from the REVIEW QUEUES drop down menu on the top bar on (Stack Overflow)
2. click "History"
3. click on an action in the Action column (Looks OK, Flag, etc.) of a post which has not already be added to any Saves list
4. click on the "Saves" icon (which turns orange for me on SO)
5. click on "Manage" in the toast message which appears at the top of the screen
6. click on "For later" in the drop down list box and select "Create new list" from the bottom of the list box
7. the input box with the "New list" placeholder text does not appear
8. click on "Done" and a toast error message appears: "List name cannot be empty."

This was tested on the first four review queues of Stack Overflow.

Only the Triage Review Queue demonstrated this behavior.

Answer 23

bugstatus-declined

The Saves icon (of a Saved post) is not highlighted on the Review tasks page of a reviewed task

While working through the review queues, I regularly add posts to my Saves lists. Every now and then, I review my progress by clicking on the History page for a review queue. I then click on the link in the Action column (Looks OK, Share Feedback, etc.) to display the Review summary page for the reviewed task.

Today, I reviewed a post in this way that I was sure I had already saved. But there was no highlight, so I clicked on the Saves icon again. A "Save this question" tooltip appeared next to the Saves icon and "An error occurred" message appeared at the top of the screen.

On further investigation, it turns out that I had indeed saved this post before, but this information (i.e. the highlit Saves icon) was not being displayed on the Review summary page.

To reproduce this effect:

1. display a review queue (for example, the First questions queue on Stack Overflow)
2. click History to display the history page
3. click on a post title link in the Task column to display a post
4. add the post to a Saves list by clicking the Saves icon
5. return to the History page
6. click on the relevant action link in the Action column
7. the Saves icon will be gray whereas the Saves icon will be highlit on the post page

If there were an answer which had been added to a Saves list, then clicking on the Answers tab from the Review summary page would also show that the Saves icon of that answer was not highlighted.

Please note that if the post had not been previously Saved to a Saves list, then it is possible to add/remove the post to/from a Saves list, which I presume is the expected behavior.

Vote icons are also not highlit

As an aside, if I had cast a vote during the review process then the vote icons are also not highlit (see green circles on first image) but I have not investigated this further.

This was tested on the first four review queues of Stack Overflow

Answer 24

Currently, there seems to be no link from the page of a saved post to where I can edit its private notes, "Move to..." another list, etc.

Suggested improvement

Please change what is currently the "unsave" action (clicking the active bookmark icon again) to the same as the "Manage" button on the toast message instead of "unsaving" right away.

Then, inside the "Manage" popup dialog, please add a "Delete" or "Unsave" button. I may want to go back after saving a post and add a private note, and I should be able to do so directly from the post page.

This suggested improvement would be similar to how the bookmark button works in browsers such as Firefox, for example. Clicking the star in Firefox again shows the options for that save, and you can remove the favorite from there or edit it.

Answer 25

feature-request

but the sorting fun doesn't end there.

The "MY LISTS" shown on the left should be easily sortable.

Currently other lists, like "Custom Filters", are sorted alphabetically by default and can't be sorted in any other way (you have to rename the filters if you want a different order). The same goes for the "Hidden Communities List" in the user profile page; it keeps the order of insertion for the sites you have an account in (meaning you have to add and remove sites from the hidden list to force a different sort order).

I think it would be an important feature that the new "MY LISTS" listing have some sort of drag and drop sorting. Or at least something (like clickable arrows for example) that allows to easily change the order of items in the list.

Answer 26

I think the vertical space between saved posts is too much and the design could be slightly more compact. If you add notes the empty vertical space becomes even more apparent, see the highlighted sections in the screenshot:

Answer 27

feature-request

Make handling of links to deleted posts consistent with that of follow-post feature.

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From end user perspective Saves and Follow-post are much similar because both features provide a way for users to create and edit lists of links to posts.

One noticeable difference is in the way how these lists handle links to deleted posts: Saves automatically delete such links (I would expect that this is complemented by automatic recovery in case of undeletion) while Follow-post list keeps such links and just provides users an option to remove them manually.

For smoother user experience suggest that both features use the same way of handling links to deleted posts. For this, one of them should change its current way to one used in another.

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At the moment I don't have strong reasons to tell which of two ways is better. My personal preference goes to the way how it is done in Follow-post feature, primarily because it looks less likely to interfere with auto-deletion scripts, as discussed eg in this bug report at MSO: Roomba hasn't run for the past two weeks and over 2800 questions evaded it.

Answer 28

bugstatus-completed

Users without access to moderator tools privilege are not able to view deleted posts that they have authored in their saved lists

With reference to:

What happens if a post I saved has been deleted?

We will be preserving the existing behavior: If you have the access to moderator tools privilege, you will be able to see deleted posts in your saved lists. If you haven't earned this privilege yet, you will only be able to view deleted posts that you have authored.

However, I do not have the access to moderator tools privilege and I cannot view deleted posts that I have authored in my saved lists.

The following screenshot shows that I have two posts "Saved" to my "To review" list. One of them is a highly voted question (with a simple private note added) and the other is my own deleted answer (to another question).

Under the list title the phrase "1 saved item" appears and there is only one saved item in the list (the highly voted question). In the "Move to" dialog, the item text states "To review (2)" proving that my deleted post is present in the list but not visible to me.

This was only tested on Stack Overflow with deleted answer posts.

Steps to reproduce:

1. Assuming you are a user without the access to moderator tools privilege
2. Create a saved list, e.g. "To review"
3. Add any (not deleted) question or answer to this "To review" saved list
4. Add any deleted answer of yours to this "To review" saved list (deleted answers can be accessed by scrolling down to the bottom of the Answers tab)
5. Click on the Saves button and click on "To review" in MY LISTS
6. Click on the three vertical dots menu button located at the top right of an item in the list
7. Click on "Move to..."
8. The number of saved items under the "To review" list title on the underlying page will be less than the number in brackets in the dialog next the "To review" list title

Answer 29

Stack Overflow was the only site partially migrated

Does this mean it takes a seriously long time to migrate all bookmarks to saves? I understand there are over 180 sites and surely millions of bookmarks, but why does it take such a long time to migrate?

You could view my question as: is the long amount of time it requires to change due to the duplications of the new tables, lists, queries, etc. for bookmarks -> saves?

Answer 30

After migration from Bookmarks to Saves, neither is now available on stackexchange.com anymore

Pic attached refers. In the area marked in red I used to be able to access bookmarks from all of my accounts.

This was especially handy when I needed to lookup a bookmark but I couldn't remember on which account (some topics may fit multiple SEs in some cases).

Now that ability seems gone.

Has it been moved somewhere else, is it temporarily disabled or has it been killed altogether?