DEV Community: Abhishek Gowda

🔖 How I Keep My Bookmarks in Sync (Without Yet Another Bookmarking App)

Abhishek Gowda — Sat, 04 Oct 2025 18:07:11 +0000

I’ve tried more bookmark managers than I care to admit — and none of them felt right.

Either I needed to open a separate app, install another extension, or use a web dashboard just to save a link. I didn’t want that. I simply wanted my browser’s native bookmarks to stay in sync — across my laptop, work machine, and phone — without giving my data away to some random cloud service.

Then I came across Floccus — and everything clicked.

🌍 What Floccus Does

Floccus syncs bookmarks across browsers and devices. It works with Git, Nextcloud, or WebDAV as backends — all open, privacy-friendly systems.

It supports Chrome, Firefox, Edge, and even has an Android app.
If you prefer the official docs, check the Floccus guides.

But if you want to see my personal setup, here’s how I got everything working.

🧩 Setting Things Up

First, install the extension for your browser from the Floccus downloads page.

Floccus lets you create profiles, which act like separate sync channels. You can use one for backup, one for work, another for personal, and so on.

Step 1: Git Sync (for Backup and Versioning)

I started with GitHub because I already use it for everything else.
You can use GitLab or any Git service you like.

Create a new Git repo (public or private).
Generate a Personal Access Token.
Open the Floccus extension → click Add profile.
Choose Git over HTTPS, give it a name.
Enter your repo URL and GitHub username.
Paste your Personal Access Token as the password.
Follow the on-screen prompts.

And done — bookmarks now sync with Git.
It also doubles as a backup since every change is versioned.

To add another browser: just repeat steps 3–7 and perform a pull to get your existing bookmarks.

🧠 Quick note: Git sync doesn’t work with the mobile app.

To include your phone in the loop, you’ll need WebDAV.

Step 2: WebDAV Sync (for Mobile + Browser Sync)

For full cross-device sync, I use FileLu.
It offers free WebDAV access, which is perfect for Floccus.

Here’s the quick setup:

Log in to your FileLu account.
Scroll to Cloud Drive WebDAV and toggle it ON.
Go back to the Floccus extension → click Add profile.
Select WebDAV share.
Enter this WebDAV link:https://webdav.filelu.com
Add your FileLu username and password.
Follow the prompts — and you’re synced!

This profile now handles cross-device syncing between browsers and your phone.

📱 Setting Up Floccus on Mobile

Floccus has an Android app available on F-Droid and the Play Store.

Here’s how I use it:

Install the app.
Tap Add profile → choose WebDAV share.
Use the same credentials and link as your browser profile.
Tap Sync — and that’s it.

The folder structure might look slightly different from desktop browsers, but the syncing works beautifully.

🧭 Why This Works for Me

With this setup:

Git acts as my safe, versioned backup.
WebDAV keeps my bookmarks synced across all devices.
Floccus makes it all feel invisible — no extra tabs, no cloud logins, no friction.

It’s the first time bookmarking feels truly mine.

☕ Final Thoughts

I’ve been using this setup for a while now, and it just works.
It’s lightweight, free and respects privacy.

If you’re tired of proprietary bookmark managers or syncing nightmares, give Floccus a shot.
Happy bookmarking 🔖

And if you’ve found another clever way to sync bookmarks, I’d love to hear about it.

Maintaining multiple ssh keys for git

Abhishek Gowda — Mon, 14 Jul 2025 12:20:31 +0000

I like to maintain multiple git accounts, one for Github and other for gitlab. I use gitlab to host my much private data in it. And only try to host that I feel safe to be online on with Github.
I will walk you through how to maintain multiple ssh key that could be used for different git accounts.
This is more specific on using ssh for git authentication.

Generation of SSH keys.

For windows install git-bash, to get working with git on windows. Once this is done. We generate keys using ssh-keygen

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "personal_email@gitlab.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_gitlab

ssh-keygen -t ed25519 -C "personal_email@github.com" -f ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github

This generates public and private keys. This keys are generally present in home directory (even in windows) under .ssh directory

Adding keys to ssh-agent

eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"

Add the keys to

ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_gitlab
ssh-add ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github

Why I need to add these? For 1, you do not want to enter your phase key again, every time you start a new session. It would be wise to add these to rc (Run Command) files, like .bashrc and .zshrc.

Update .ssh/config file

This is the important step. Now we need to tell which keys to use when we connect to the remote host.
This is a property file, be careful with the spacings. Use # for adding comments

# Github
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github

# Gitlab
Host gitlab.com
    HostName gitlab.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_gitlab

There is other way of seeing as well, adding context to the Host itself. Let say you are working on a machine provided by an organization and want to just check your own repository now and then, but don't want to use keys and user-names of the organization. We can do the following

# Work
Host github.com-work
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_work

# Personal
Host github.com-personal
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github_personal

Now when we access the repository we provide context.

Update public keys to services

Now we have created our keys, we need to publish the public key to the service, so it used used when authenticating.
Copy the public key of github, you will see .pub at the end of the keys.

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_github

Now go to Github -> Settings -> SSH and GPG keys

Now copy the public key of gitlab

cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_gitlab

Now go to Gitlab -> Preferences -> SSH Keys

Verify connection

Once the keys are added, it is good practice to check the connections.

ssh -T git@github.com 
ssh -T git@gitlab.com

Make sure to use right Host, if you have setup with "-work" and "-personal", use them

ssh -T git@github.com-personal

This should display the username, the keys were added to.

Using correct host names

Now when I use gitlab I will do something like

git clone git@gitlab.com:my-name/repo.git

But when we have multiple github accounts, we could use the context I mentioned before to identify which ssh-key to use, like

git clone git@github.com-work:yourcompany/repo.git

Updating git config

With the above steps, we are complete with setting up ssh. Which is used for authentication.
Now we would want to update gitconfig. Run

git config user.name
git config user.email

commands. This will give the global name and email used. We would need to update our local name and local email, as they would want to reflect in the git logs.
Make sure you are in the repository where you want the name to be updated.

git config --local user.name "<USER_NAME>"
git config --local user.email "<private_email@example.com>"

Leave any questions or suggestions you want to answer or improve on.

Array.Map vs For...loop

Abhishek Gowda — Sun, 08 Jun 2025 07:50:46 +0000

I was solving a problem and saw when I used Array.map the execution was lagging a bit. And thought to switch to using for...loop, as I was not doing any complicated calculation within map callback.

This is the sample benchmark data I used

6,1,4,5,3,9,0,1,9,5,1,8,6,7,0,5,5,4,4

And I did not do anything fancy, just pushed it to an array, similar to map where is returns us a new array.

Compared it using JS Perf and saw that for..loop is ~25 times faster than map.

I would not be switching to for..loop because of this, a good to know when there is a slow down in the application.