Once in a while, during your constant cycling through your social media feeds, you encounter a memorable tweet, Facebook post, or Instagram photo that you know you’ll want to revisit later. Maybe it speaks a profound truth or perhaps it makes you laugh until you cry—either way, you don’t want it to disappear into the stream of constant updates. That’s why you need the ability to bookmark posts.
(Quick side note: If you’re here because you want to save your own social media posts, you can do that too! Check out this guide.)
Twitter has just rolled out a new feature for tagging posts you’d like to come back to later. This “Bookmarks” update may be new, but other social networks already offer similar post-saving abilities. Here’s how to build up a library of social media goodness.
In the past, when Twitter users encountered tweets they wanted to save, they would “favorite” or “like” the posts. However, this activity is public: Other people could see those marked posts, which could unintentionally give them the impression that the user agreed with or approved of the tweet’s content.
Now there’s a better way: Bookmarks. Bookmarking a tweet is private, so only the user can see the marked posts. This lets you build up a personal archive of tweets that you don’t want to lose. At the date of publication, Twitter’s bookmarks are only available through the apps, not the website. But before long, the feature should appear everywhere.
On Twitter for Android, you bookmark a tweet by tapping the Share button (three connected dots) under a tweet and choosing Add Tweet to Bookmarks. To revisit these saved tweets, tap your Twitter avatar on the top left corner and select Bookmarks. If you see a bookmark that you no longer care to keep, tap the Share icon again and then select Remove Tweet from Bookmarks to take it off the list. Or get rid of all your bookmarks at once by tapping the menu button (three vertical dots) on the top right and selecting Clear all Bookmarks.
The process is very similar on Twitter for iOS. Tap the Share button (an up arrow in a box) underneath any tweet and choose Add Tweet to Bookmarks. To scroll through your bookmarks, tap your Twitter avatar on the top left and pick Bookmarks. You can remove tweets by tapping Share again, but unlike on Android, you can’t delete all of them at once.
Over on Facebook, you can bookmark any News Feed posts you encounter. This lets you privately save everything from photos to sponsored links, and nobody else will see what you choose to keep. As on Twitter, saved posts stay linked to your account rather than to a particular device, so you can access the same set from your web browser and your phone app.
On the social network’s website, simply click a post’s menu button (three dots in its top right corner) and select Save post. To see the stuff you’ve bookmarked, click Saved on the left of the News Feed—if you can’t find this link, you might have to first click See more… before it appears. Along the top of the Saved screen, you can filter your list by type, such as images or videos. To remove a saved post, click its menu button (three horizontal dots) and choose Unsave.
You can also save posts in the Facebook app. If you own the Android version, tap a post’s menu button (three horizontal dots in its top right corner) followed by Save post. To find all your bookmarks, tap the main app’s menu button (three horizontal lines on the top right of the screen) and select Saved. To remove a post, hold your finger over it and then choose Unsave.
On Facebook for iOS, the process is almost exactly the same: Tap a post’s menu button (three horizontal dots in its top right corner) and choose Save Post. Later, you tap the main Facebook menu button (three horizontal lines on the bottom right of the screen) followed by Saved to see your posts. Any time you want to remove something from the list, tap the three dots on the side of that post and choose Unsave.
Like the other networks, Instagram also offers an internal bookmarking service, which lets you save your friends’ posts in a long list or organize them into collections. As with Twitter and Facebook, this is a private action, so no one else can tell what you’re keeping.
On the website, you add a picture or video to your archive by clicking the bookmark icon (it looks like the end of a stylized ribbon) to the right of that post. To view saved posts, click your Instagram username on the top right of the screen and select Saved. When you check out bookmarked posts on the Instagram website, you see one long list in reverse chronological order. However, if you’re using a phone app, you gain an additional feature: saving these posts to particular collections that you can browse through later.
With Instagram for Android, you tap a post’s bookmark icon, which appears underneath it to the right side. In addition to bookmarking the post, you can also select Save to Collection to put the post in a particular album. Either choose one of your existing collections or make a new one by tapping the Plus icon to the right. To scroll through your saved posts, tap the Profile icon on the bottom right, followed by the bookmark icon on the top right (above the grid of pictures). You can either view everything in a list by tapping the All tab or see the different albums you’ve created by opening the Collections tab.
You follow a similar process on Instagram for iOS. Tap the same bookmark icon—just under the photo or video—and follow that with a tap on Save to Collection (if you want to put the post in a certain album). Finally, tap the Profile icon on the bottom right, followed by the bookmark icon on the right, to see your saved posts. As on Android, you can switch between the All and Collections tabs.
On Android or iOS, you remove a bookmarked picture or video the same way: Open the saved posts page, tap the post’s thumbnail, and hit the bookmark icon.
Third-party bookmarkers
If you find yourself bookmarking a lot of posts with links that you want to read later, consider consolidating these articles in one place: a third-party service like Pocket (for Android and iOS) or Instapaper (for Android and iOS). These free tools will store selected articles from all over the internet until you have time to read them.
Pocket has more features, including the ability to reserve videos, but Instapaper has a cleaner interface, which makes it easier to read long-form articles. Once you pick a tool and install it, you’ll see that service appear as an option whenever you tap an app’s Share button. In some cases, you can share posts straight to Instapaper or Pocket, while in others you have to copy the URL you want and manually paste it into the read-it-later app.
In addition to these dedicated bookmarking apps, you can always use your browser’s bookmarks. Every modern browser (including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, and Microsoft Edge) lets you save links and organize them into folders, ready to recall again at any time. If you’re in a hurry, simply open a post and save its link as a browser bookmark. For those who sign into the same browser on both computer and mobile device, you can also sync your saved bookmarks across platforms.
With Chrome, for example, you add a new bookmark by clicking the Star this page icon on the right side of the address bar. A small pop-up window will appear, and from here, you can add the bookmark to an existing folder or create a new one. To pull up your bookmarks, open the Chrome menu by clicking the icon of three vertical dots on the top right of the window, and then choose Bookmarks from the list. The bookmarking features are just as accessible on other popular web browsers.