Finally, two new, modern Pinboard apps

Pinboard has been, as far as I know, the de facto online bookmarking tool for nearly a whole decade, which is why I’ve been baffled at how the Pinboard app marketplace has languished for so long. The two frontrunners — Pinner and Pushpin — were last updated 4 years ago and 1 year ago, respectively, and Pushpin has always been slow and unstable for me. Both seemed to have stalled on maintenance and the addition of any new features. I started to assume Pinboard was just too niche of a tool to warrant any serious app development, and that people had maybe just just moved on to a combination of Pocket and Chrome bookmarks.

Every few months, though, my frustration with Pushpin would lead me to search the App Store for alternatives, and finally this weekend I got some! They are both already huge improvements over their predecessors, have both iOS and macOS versions, and for all the tech blogs I read, I hadn’t heard anything about them.

Pinstachio (App Store) by Francisco Cantu is fast and capable, and feels very at-home on both iOS and macOS. Its feature set is relatively limited, and it charges a subscription fee (though an extremely modest one at $7 per year) rather than a one-time purchase, but it’s definitely one to try out and keep an eye on.

Pins for Pinboard (App Store, Twitter) (not to be confused with Pins for Pinboard.in) is by Quang Anh Do, maker of the (now-defunct?) Writing Kit. With clever, unique features — like browsing by domain, “On This Day,” “Random 20” — tag and metadata suggestions, preview images, a development blog and Twitter, and a one-time purchase price, Pins looks like the clear winner to me.

Here’s a quick comparison table:

PinstachioPins for Pinboard
Mac appYesYes
Suggested tags / metadataNoYes
Preview imagesOnly on detail viewYes
Token loginYesYes
Price$7/yr$14 one-time
Data collectionData not linked:
– purchases
– diagnostics
Data not linked:
– purchases
– diagnostics
– usage data
Rating4.3 with 21 reviews4.9 with 192 reviews
First releaseNov 24, 2020Jan 22, 2021
Latest releaseOct 28, 2021Dec 3, 2021
All data as of Jan 3, 2022

Let me know in the comments if I’m missing any feature comparisons or if there are any other Pinboard apps or tools you’d like to recommend.

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