118

I don't know about anyone else, but I have a reasonable list of bookmarks (formerly called favorites) now, and it can be rather difficult to find the relevant ones at any given time. Sometimes, I have a specific one in mind, others I just want to see all bookmarks relating to a specific topic. It would be nice if there were a way to organise my bookmarks by tag, or OP, or possibly just search them.

How can we improve the bookmarks feature?

Please post your ideas on how we might improve the bookmarks feature of the Stack Exchange sites. Try to keep each answer to one idea so that the votes reflect the popularity of a single idea.

Improve this question
14
  • 3
    Hey, can we split this up into a problem(question) + potential solution(answers)? This is something I've wanted too, but I think it deserves a way to discuss and vote different ideas.
    – Joel Coehoorn Mod
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 15:30
  • Sure. Let me do some editing.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 15:30
  • related, but I don't think identical question meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3814/…
    – Timothy Carter
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 15:31
  • I wonder: can greasemonkey scripts self-modify, and therefore also hold user-created data for the specific site?
    – Joel Coehoorn Mod
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 15:38
  • You don't really need to include "Feature" in the title if you use the [feature-request] tag.
    – ChrisF Mod
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 15:43
  • @ChrisF: I disagree. Not everyone reviews the tags before contributing. The title and question content provide the context for any answers or comments.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 16:16
  • 2
    I've made an easy way to search your favorites. Some editing would allow you to search tags instead - or both: meta.stackexchange.com/questions/3739/…
    – Sampson
    Commented Jul 13, 2009 at 15:40
  • 1
    @Jonathan: I don't see Greasemonkey as a permanent solution to this, but I like that it can provide an interim solution.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Jul 13, 2009 at 16:23
  • 3
    the plan is to overhaul this system in the next few months ... ideas welcome, it is on our radar
    – waffles
    Commented Nov 3, 2011 at 22:02
  • I cant believe the # of times I have asked for a change to the "favorites" feature. It is one of the most annoingest (is that even a word) feature I have run into. I have asked on meta specifically to the so developers and jeff atwood to CHANGE the favorites feature. We need a watch list, not every question is a favorite...@JeffAtwood states that if you find a question interesting to just star it or favorite it. Ok jeff, now I have 2k favorites, even though more then half are not favorites - they are "WATCHES". Please implement this feature.
    – JonH
    Commented Nov 4, 2011 at 13:53
  • See this meta.stackexchange.com/questions/106188/… as an example
    – JonH
    Commented Nov 4, 2011 at 13:54
  • See also how quora.com handles it, this question deserves +100 upvotes. Maybe we will get someone to realize that searching inside of favorites is a nightmare.
    – JonH
    Commented Nov 4, 2011 at 13:59
  • 1
    @SamSaffron Not sure how you came about this information, but it's been nearly two years since this comment and I'm not aware of any improvements in the system. Am I missing something in the profile interface?
    – chb
    Commented Jun 15, 2013 at 11:04
  • Six and a half years later and we still have no solution for this beyond the one in the accepted answer? That's ridiculous.
    – B.K.
    Commented Dec 28, 2015 at 8:49

12 Answers 12

Reset to default
22

It would be nice if there were a way to organise my favourites by tag, or OP, or possibly just search them.

Hurrah!

This has been implemented now!

You can use infavorites:mine in the search page to search by your favorites.

For e.g.

You can also search for other user's favorites. For e.g. This is Jon Skeet's favorite list:

For more details see https://stackoverflow.com/help/searching

Improve this answer
3
  • 5
    It would be great to add a button Search in Favourites in the favourites tab wich sends directly to the search page, then we only need to add tags to filter results... No need then everytime to look for the syntax here or in the help xD
    – Enissay
    Commented Feb 19, 2014 at 23:32
  • @Enissay I agree, it should be the site's job to introduce the features rather than the users to figure it out.
    – zyy
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 20:00
  • This had no effect on my search results. I imagine it's been renamed, but I don't know how to find what it's been renamed to (or if that's the case)
    – Daniel Kaplan
    Commented Feb 5, 2022 at 2:01
51

Provide the ability to view favourites by tag.

Improve this answer
6
  • 4
    Indeed, plus add the ability to add your own tags to your favorites, and I think you have a killer feature.
    – Yishai
    Commented Apr 8, 2010 at 13:43
  • I love how this was the accepted answer, does that mean this will happen ???
    – JonH
    Commented Nov 7, 2011 at 15:24
  • @JonH: When this question was originally asked over 2 years ago, this was the most popular answer so I accepted it.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Nov 7, 2011 at 16:04
  • But I dont see any changes to the favorites section if this was asked 2 years ago- are you saying nothing was done about this request?
    – JonH
    Commented Nov 7, 2011 at 18:10
  • 2
    At the time, yes, nothing was done.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Nov 7, 2011 at 21:40
  • This is probably the simplest solution to the problem because it requires no extra storage of user-created tags/categories.
    – Ambo100
    Commented Nov 18, 2012 at 18:25
26

One option: tag your favorites as you wish.

Simpler solution: organize your favorites into "folders" (one folder per favorite).

The latter would suffice for the way I use favorites; your mileage may vary...

Though if I wasn't so lazy had more time I'd use the browser bookmarking feature to organize them instead of Stack Overflow.

Improve this answer
4
  • 1
    I really like this idea, and would love to have it propagated to a view of my answers as well.
    – womp
    Commented Aug 12, 2009 at 20:52
  • 1
    ability to tag favourites so they appear in a specific folder is exactly what I want. For example if I'm doing a lot of research into a particular subject e.g. 'iOS development' and I'm finding a lot of questions/answers on this subject, I'd like to favourite them and then add to a favourite folder at the same time. Bit like when you add a favourite in a browser. Or when you're searching for images on a stock image site, you can add them to a light box so you can build up a collection of images for a particular project.
    – Dave Haigh
    Commented Aug 29, 2013 at 10:06
  • Yes I would really need such a feature to classify some questions/answer like "edit to improve", "to answer later" and so on...
    – рüффп
    Commented Oct 31, 2013 at 10:56
  • I had the idea just now that this would be a nice thing to have, but the category/folders system seems to have been rejected as "duplicative" with respect to search-in-favorites. Now I'm sad :(
    – tel
    Commented Oct 2, 2018 at 20:27
21

Provide a search feature for searching favourites (could be just in the favourites page or as part of the main search).

Improve this answer
1
  • It would be better if it is just in the favourite page.
    – zyy
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 20:02
8

A way to single out questions that were favorited because of a specific answer to the question. Perhaps this could be covered by annotations.

Improve this answer
2
  • I like this. Quite often it is hard to remember which answer in a favourite is the one you want. It isn't always the accepted one. Perhaps a "personally accepted" answer would be nice or the ability to favourite one or more answers within a question. Of course, annotations could allow for this by allowing for the embedding of links.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Jul 9, 2009 at 15:38
  • 2
    I love this idea too, also, perhaps it is more clear to say we would like to be able to favourite answers rather than just questions!
    – zyy
    Commented Dec 3, 2019 at 20:08
6

Provide a way to annotate favourites and maybe even tag them (like labelling your GMail a popular online e-mail service provides).

Improve this answer
3
  • 3
    Maybe favor them. No, no, that's just infinite recursion.
    – akarnokd
    Commented Jul 13, 2009 at 20:41
  • @kd304: Nice :)
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Jul 13, 2009 at 20:43
  • 1
    +1 for this: I like delicious.com's implementation of description etc. Wow this is an old question!
    – a different ben
    Commented Apr 17, 2012 at 1:01
5

Every time I ask this question mentioning to @JeffAtwood that the favorites feature is totally flawed he closes my question. The guys have some grudge about changing the code base about favorites vs watches. I'll repeat myself once again (in hopes that @JeffAtwood doesn't close or delete my thread):

There is a HUGE difference between a watch and a favorite. If I keep favoriting every question that I want to watch I can easily have 1k's of "favorites". Numerous people have asked for a change only to get their "ticket" closed or locked saying to use the little "star". I can easily post to mine but you can search for it on meta.

Please implement something where we can watch threads or be able to search on favorites.

Improve this answer
1
3

Have an icon (on the front page) that takes you to your favorites list.

Improve this answer
1
  • 4
    This would certainly make favourites more accessible, though I don't think it solves the problem of navigating the favourites in a timely manner once you have them.
    – Jeff Yates
    Commented Aug 14, 2009 at 12:39
3

The ability to group questions together similar to the reputation drop down (probably group-by-tag) so we can collapse them down to a more manageable size, and expand when necessary.

Improve this answer
1
2

Perhaps, have your own properties (your personal pages' contents) available in an XML format and have XPath/XQuery support for doing evaluations?

Improve this answer
2

I've posted a feature request about an alternative way for favourites to work, it seems relevant enough to mention here: Can't favorites work more like the activity and reputation tabs?

In short, I'd like to see the favourites system work the same way as the activity tab in user profiles. The way you can see you've edited something yesterday and placed a comment the day before that, the favourites could work like that. Not only would you get the most recent (relevant) events on top, you could even track them back later on.

Improve this answer
1

I know this is an old question. I ran across it while trying to find an easier way to navigate through my favorite questions.

So I built my own Chrome extension to easily navigate through favorites on the side bar.

Here is the link for it on chrome extension store.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .