How sync works
Linkgarden has no server. Your library lives in a database on your device, and that database is mirrored into your own iCloud private database. There is no Linkgarden account to create, no password, and no company-run copy of your bookmarks.
The model
Section titled “The model”Every bookmark, folder, and tag you create is written to a local store first, and only then uploaded. That ordering matters more than it sounds:
- Saving never waits on the network. Linkgarden works offline and catches up later.
- A failed or slow upload cannot lose data — the record is already on disk.
- Two devices converge because both are mirroring the same iCloud container, not because one is authoritative.
What travels
Section titled “What travels”| Travels through iCloud | Stays on the device |
|---|---|
| Bookmarks — name, address, notes, favourite, created date, deleted date | Theme |
| The downloaded favicon for each bookmark | Accent colour |
| Folders — name, colour, order | Transparent Background |
| Tags — name, colour, order | Animation settings |
| Which folder and tags each bookmark has | Keyboard shortcuts |
| View mode and sort order |
Preferences are deliberately local. Your Mac and your iPad are different-shaped devices, and forcing one window’s appearance onto the other would be a worse default than letting each be set up for where it is used.
What it needs
Section titled “What it needs”- A device signed in to iCloud.
- A network connection, eventually. Not right now.
If iCloud is unavailable, Linkgarden keeps working against the local store. Settings shows what state sync is in — see Settings for the full list of status labels.
Deletion syncs too
Section titled “Deletion syncs too”Deleting a bookmark does not remove the record; it stamps it with a deletion date. That stamped record syncs like any other, which is what makes Recently Deleted consistent across devices — delete on the Mac, and the iPad shows it in Recently Deleted rather than silently losing it.
Permanent deletion, after 30 days or on demand, removes the record for real, and that removal syncs as well.
The Safari extension’s part
Section titled “The Safari extension’s part”The extension does not talk to iCloud. It writes into the same local store the app uses, through storage the two share.
That leaves a gap: something has to run the upload. On a Mac, saving from the extension wakes Linkgarden in the background, lets it push the change, and then lets the app quit itself once the upload is confirmed. That is why the popup shows a live sync line, and why it sometimes says “Starting Linkgarden…”.
Where the app cannot be woken, the save simply waits on disk until you next open Linkgarden. Nothing is lost either way — the difference is only how soon the bookmark shows up on your other devices.
Trade-offs this design accepts
Section titled “Trade-offs this design accepts”No sharing, and no web access. Bookmarks in a private iCloud database are reachable only by you, on your own Apple devices. A shared folder or a web view of your library would need infrastructure Linkgarden deliberately does not have.
Conflicts are resolved by the system, not by the app. Editing the same bookmark on two devices while both are offline resolves the way CloudKit resolves it. There is no merge interface, because there is no user-visible version history to merge.
Sync timing is not under the app’s control. iCloud decides when to push and pull. The status in Settings reports what is happening; it cannot force it.
One iCloud account. There is no way to keep separate libraries, or to move one bookmark to a different account.
The upside
Section titled “The upside”What you get for those limits is an app with nothing between you and your data: no account to create, no service that can go down or be shut off, no third party holding a copy of what you read, and a library that keeps working in full when the network does not.