App Discovery: Karakeep (aka Hoarder) a web clip manager

If you go on the web a lot, you often come across articles that you want to reference later. So do you bookmark it, email it to yourself, or do something else? (Evernote? OneNote? Obsidian? Pocket?)

I personally had used various services including one called Omnivore, but that shut down a few months back. Then I read somewhere that if you host your own, you don't have to be EVER at the mercy of some other service provider.

As I find clipping to Evernote way too slow (up to 15 seconds per clip), I decided to look for something else. 

Then I found KaraKeep. 

How KaraKeep Works

KaraKeep is both an app and a service. It takes clippings of articles you can transfer to it via bookmarks, Android app, app share, iOS app, Chrome or Firefox extensions, and so on. It will take whatever you sent it (and optionally, run it against an LLM to extract keywords) so later you can go back and browse or search through via regular search and keywords. 

How to Install / Self-Host KaraKeep

What's great about Karakeep: it runs via a Docker Container, so there is minimal configuration if you already have Docker Container all set up. You simply download the whole package, and "run" it. Done. They have documentation online, and Discord channel as well.  

To make KaraKeep server available to you from almost anywhere, you setup a Tailscale distributed VPN, and enroll both your PC (whichever that runs the Docker container) and your smartphone (where you plan to clip from) to make sure they can see each other. And really, that's it. 

From now on, when you see an interesting article on the smartphone, simily do share >> KaraKeep. No need to choose keywords, no need to choose specific labels, no need to specify title... Share it, and forget it. It's clipped almost instantly, no matter where you are, and whether you're on cellular data or wifi. 

Run the app itself (or if you're at home, go to the machine running KaraKeep and browse to http://localhost:3000) and you can see what you've clipped, and use search and keywords to find what you clipped on that subject. 

If you want to use LLM to automagically pull out keywords for your searches, you need to configure KaraKeep (server, on your PC) by following this guide. 

Troubleshooting

Oh, and if you ever run into a problem with Docker, something about port 3000 is already taken, you need to restart hns, with "net stop hns" then "net start hns". You may also need to restart the Docker Container for Karakeep. Then it should work. 

If it fails on the smartphone side, make sure Tailscale is RUNNING. Obviously Tailscale needs to run for the VPN to work, and send your traffic back to your network to the KaraKeep "server". 

Now go have fun clipping everything you needed.