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

feature-request Keep the name of the feature as "Bookmarks/Bookmarking" or find a more appropriate term.

Maybe something along the lines of "Notebook" (as suggested in the comments) would be a better name, which would lead to "save in my notebook", "saved items", and "in:notebook". It would also make sense as a name if the feature were further expanded to include other sorts of notes or information organization.

Expanding on what terdon has already pointed out,

The definition of save as a noun:

• In various sports, a block that prevents an opponent from scoring.
• (baseball) When a relief pitcher comes into a game leading by 3 points
• (runs) or less, and his team wins while continually being ahead.
• (professional wrestling, slang) A point in a professional wrestling match when one or more wrestlers run to the ring to aid a fellow wrestler who is being beaten.
• (computing) The act, process, or result of saving data to a storage medium.
• (role-playing games) A saving throw.

This is not a good way to describe bookmarking a page so you can refer to it later. It implies making a copy that isn't going to change. Using "save" as a noun in the context of saving a link in a list is likely to confuse some people. If I "save" a web page in my browser, it downloads it to my disk.

Sure, most technical people fluent in English won't have trouble understanding it, but why not just continue to use the most appropriate and well-understood term?

bookmark noun (COMPUTER)
an address on the Internet that you record so that you can quickly find something again:
Add this website to your bookmarks.

I can't find a learner's dictionary that has the computing sense of "save" as a noun. The only definition they have is the sporting one: "block that prevents an opponent from scoring".

I understand wanting to differentiate this new feature from the old style bookmarks, but I don't think that is a good enough reason to avoid using the most commonly understood terms. Organizing bookmarks into lists and annotating them is not a new thing. There are probably good translations already in place for bookmarking terms.

It is weird that the bookmark icon was retained for "Saves" instead of the floppy disk icon normally associated with saving. If the concept were really that different, I assume retaining the old icon would be a source of confusion.

Answer 2

This is a great feature, thank you! I just don't quite understand why you need a name change from something clearly understandable (bookmarks) to something very confusing. "Saves", to me, reads like a verb, not a noun. Yes, we have saves in various sports, but that refers to the action of saving and not to the object that was saved.

I would perhaps call the action of saving something a save but once saved, whatever it is that was saved is not a save itself. If I grab my hat just as it was flying overboard, you might say "nice save!", but you would be referring to the action I took to save it and not to the hat itself.

The only other case I can think of where save is used as a countable noun referring to the saved item is saved games in computer games. But that is a very, very specific context and isn't really representative of how the word is used by the broader public.

To me, in:saves is semantically jarring and I wouldn't know what a "Saves" section would contain. If you want to change the name to signify that this is more than just a bookmark, can't we go for something like "Saved" or "Saved Posts"?

We could then search for is:saved or in:saved and everything would be semantically clear and proper.

Answer 3

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

Bookmarks were an important tool in the process of identifying voting fraud. I understand that mods should not interact with users' saved posts, but is there a good reason why mods cannot see them?

Answer 4

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.

I feel like this turns the ‘save’ name into a misnomer. Usually, when I save something, I can trust that it remains there until I choose to get rid of it (unless there is an accident).

I don’t particularly care which way this is resolved, though; I’m rather indifferent to the feature, as I don’t use it much (worst case, I can just switch to browser bookmarks). Not that the changes are otherwise bad.

Answer 5

Will my saved posts and lists be public? Nope! […] The existing Bookmarks tab on your network profile page will also be rebranded to Saves and made private.

Oh no! This breaks my workflow… I think public bookmarks are a good way of showcasing important questions, e.g. for lists of canonical (duplicate-target) topics. This was very helpful for curating content. I don't need no private lists, the followed posts feature solved that for me just fine. So I have a

feature-request

Please allow making individual lists public and searchable. It doesn't need to be (and probably shouldn't be) public by default, but it's an important aspect of the current bookmarking system to keep as an option.

Answer 6

Some questions about private notes:

1. Will there be a character limit on private notes? If so, what is it?

2. Will mini (comment style) markdown be supported in private notes?

   • When I save dupe targets (in my current system), I also include a snip of the solution so that I know what the target is for.
     e.g. my note for How to apply a function to two columns of Pandas dataframe currently looks something like:

     df['Col3'] = df.apply(lambda r: func(r['Col1'], r['Col2'], axis=1)

     This allows me to search my page for the solution to find the corresponding target. For this reason (among others), things like code formatting in private notes would be very helpful.

Answer 7

feature-request

Allow for searching in specific lists.

I currently have bookmarked a lot of questions that are canonicals for different topics, so I can quickly find them and link them, when needed.

I do love the idea of being able to have a separate list of items that are of personal interest, not something to link to often. However, I would want to be able to choose which list I search through - whether to search for a canonical to use as a duplicate or for something else.

Answer 8

feature-request

There should be some way to check which list a saved post is in, and what private notes you have given it — from the post's page.

Currently, you can see that a post is saved on its page, but to see what list it is in, or to read the notes you have to find the post in the All saves list.

Mock-up:

Answer 9

feature-request

Lists with items in them could prompt before you can delete them.

People do dumb things. Since you can't really recover a list, or the items in them, it might be nice to warn folks that everything in a list that's deleted is gone. This wouldn't make sense with an empty list but the moment there's an item, and especially an annotation for the item, letting people know about potential data loss seems like a good idea.

Answer 10

feature-request

Can there be a way to undo un-saving a post?

At the moment, accidentally clicking the button leaves you with no recourse:

I really like how this works with Followed posts, where the "X" turns into a "Follow" button, and you can undo your mistake just as easily as you made it.

Answer 11

bug/feature-requeststatus-completed

You told me about the new feature; no need to repeat on every single site.

Every time I open a post on any SE site, I get this popover message:

...unless I have previously dismissed it on that specific site.

I appreciate that this is a new cool feature and we want users who aren't following Meta to be informed about it. The only problem is that dismissing the popover only stops it from appearing on the current site, so one would have to dismiss it at least^* once on every site upon visiting, which is pretty annoying.

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^* _{It will appear more than once on a single site if you open multiple posts before dismissing it.}

Answer 12

feature-requeststatus-review

I think it would be desirable to have the right side of the Saves MY LISTS display the number of posts saved in each list item. This would also be consistent with the Communities in the User profile where the right side displays reputation per site. (Overall most listings in the User profile have numbers, the Saves list itself is feeling partially empty.)

Answer 13

feature-request

Change the wording "You have no saved items" shown when a list is empty:

This is misleading as it implies no saved items at all. Please change to:

You have no saved items in this list

Answer 14

support

Will I be able to search the "private note" content using the in:saves search operator?

Or will there be a separate operator for the "private note" search?

Answer 15

feature-request

Can you add the ability to move saves to a new list in-bulk?

Since everything was migrated to the "For later" list, I'm now wanting to sort my saves into better-fitting lists.

But I have 65 of them on this site, and each one I want to move requires 5 clicks and several seconds to send to a new list... while a somewhat minor complaint, I can't imagine what this process would be like for someone with hundreds of such saves.

It would be really, really useful to be able to e.g. click a checkbox next to a bunch of saves in a given list and then move all of the selected ones to another list at once.

Answer 16

bugstatus-completed

It's possible to move a saved post to a new list, not enter a name for the new list, and click 'Done'. In that case, nothing happens, except that you get a notification

Question saved to .

Answer 17

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.

Why can't I access my existing bookmarks per the old interface, until they are migrated? Why do I have to trust, for an unspecified length of time (which has already been many hours), that I will eventually get access again to my hundreds of bookmarks (most of which are essential to how I use Stack Overflow nowadays, since they make it feasible for me to work around the terrible site search and find the canonical duplicates I want more quickly)? Why do site searches using inbookmarks:mine ignore that term silently?

Answer 18

bugstatus-completed

New Saves dialogs are draggable but cannot be moved

The three new Saves dialogs: "Edit list", "New List", and "Move to" would all appear to be draggable as the cross arrows pointer appears over the title, like so:

However, these dialogs cannot be dragged.

Tabbing to the title of the new dialogs

A connected issue may be that it is possible to tab to the title using the tab key, and a black border appears when the title has the focus.

It appears that the dialog cannot be moved using the keyboard either (pressing up or down arrow scrolls the underlying page and pressing left or right arrow does nothing). This may create accessibility issues.

In the image below, the red circles indicate the tab stops:

This was tested on Stack Overflow

Answer 19

feature-request Set a default list other than “For later.” Or, be able to rename the existing default list.

I'd say 90% of my bookmarks are to keep for permanent reference, and 10% are “for later.” Hence, I'd like the save button to put something into my “Reference” list by default, and then have the option to move it.

Currently my options are:

• Move saves from For later to Reference 9/10 times. That's 5 clicks rather than 1.
• Use the For later as my reference list, and make a separate “actually for later” list. That's confusing.
• Ignore the whole feature and treat For later as classic bookmarks.

Answer 20

bug plurals status-completed

All item lists (with 1 member) say "1 saved items":

Answer 21

bugsupportstatus-bydesign

Currently, the user count of people who've "Saved" a post is no longer shown. Is this intentional? Will the number be brought back in the post listing?

Formerly:

Answer 22

bugstatus-completed

There currently appears to be no way to add a post to an empty Saves list

Here is one way to reproduce this:

1. Click on the Saves button
2. Click on the + button and create two new Saves list named, for example: "one" and "two"

3. Click on the Saves icon next to an unsaved question or answer
4. Click on the "Manage" button in the toast message and click on "For later"
5. The drop down list does not show any empty Saves lists, namely, neither "one" nor "two are listed

Interestingly, if you click on "Create new list" and try to create a new list called "one", for example, then you will see the "List name already exists" error message after clicking "Done".

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 empty lists were possible at some point:

Answer 23

feature-request

Please let us delete lists without having to edit them first:

Answer 24

bug

Typing “in:saves” into the all-sites search box on https://stackexchange.com doesn't work. The first time I tried it, it returned one result from MSE (if I remember correctly). Now, I get “an unexpected error occurred”. I would expect (or rather, hope) that it will give me saves from all sites.

Answer 25

support

Navigating to https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/saves/current works - it shows your own saves.

But the URL is inconsistent with how other user pages work: https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/current redirects for me to https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/295232/glorfindel.

Is it on purpose that https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/saves/current does not redirect to https://meta.stackexchange.com/users/saves/295232?

Answer 26

bug

Searching for in:saves on sites where one doesn't have any saved posts returns a list of all (non-deleted) posts ever created, rather than returning zero results:

Answer 27

bugstatus-review

Minor quibble, but a bug nonetheless:

Attempting to un- or re-save a post that's already been un- or resaved errors out.

E.g. if you have multiple tabs open, and try to save the same post in each, the second time the action will show an error:

For reference, with Followed posts, clicking the follow button just works on both tabs regardless.

Answer 28

status-review

Ok. Lovely change. Nice that all the bookmarks (previously named favorites) are MOVED.

But how do I access those moved items from the API??

I have an automation on the /users/{ids}/favorites which now returns NOTHING. https://api.stackexchange.com/docs/favorites-on-users

Get the questions bookmarked (previously known as "favorited") by users identified by a set of ids.

Did the API get left behind in the planning of this change or did I miss something?

Answer 29

I get that there's a purpose in telling users about a new feature. But does it have to be done individually for every single Stack Exchange site? I've seen this box about 20 times already. Can't that check be network-wide? At the very least, meta sites don't need to display this when I've already seen it on their corresponding main site.

Answer 30

Regarding the Favorite Answer (Silver Badge) and Stellar Answer (Gold Badge) requirements, will the number of saves exclude saving by the OP? In other words, is it 25/100 saves by people other than myself for me to earn the badge on one of my answers? Or will saving my own answers contribute (or will it even be possible)?