Tips, shortcuts, and answers for Keepers on Mac, iPhone, and iPad.
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ⌘R | Sync |
| ⇧⌘R | Deep Scan for Removed Bookmarks |
| ⇧⌘I | Import Keepers Export… |
| ⇧⌘E | Export Keepers Library… |
| ⌘, | Settings |
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ⇧⌘S | Sync now, or retry after a failure |
| ⌘. | Stop a sync in progress |
| ⇧⌘U | Upgrade, when you’ve reached the free limit |
The menu bar icon animates while a sync is running. The menu shows your active account, your seven most recent bookmarks, and how much of the free allowance you’ve used. Keepers keeps syncing from the menu bar with the main window closed — you don’t have to leave the app open on screen.
| Shortcut | Does |
|---|---|
| ↑ / ↓ | Previous / next media item within the bookmark |
| ← / → | Jump to the previous / next bookmark |
| S | Start or stop the slideshow |
| ⌘S | Save the current image or video |
| Esc | Leave fullscreen, or close the viewer |
The slideshow interval lives in the viewer’s own slideshow menu. There’s an option to let videos play out in full instead of being cut off at the next tick. GIFs are exempt — a looping GIF never ends, so waiting for one never ends either.
In fullscreen, drag the transport bar wherever suits you. Its position is stored as a fraction of the window rather than in pixels, so it lands in the same relative place on a different display.
Click to select; ⌘-click or ⇧-click to build up a selection. The selection bar appears with everything you can do to the whole batch at once: add to an album, create a new album, apply a colour label, add tags, save media, remove from an album, or remove from X or Bluesky.
Drag bookmarks straight onto an album in the sidebar.
In any tag field, press Return to add a tag and use commas to add several at once. Keepers suggests tags you’ve already used as you type — arrow keys to move through the list, Return to accept.
Six colour labels: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. You can also filter by Any label or No label.
Sort by: Bookmarked (newest or oldest first), Posted (newest or oldest first), Most liked, Most bookmarked, or By author.
A smart album is a saved set of rules rather than a fixed list, so it updates itself as you bookmark. Rules can match on tag, colour label, media type, author, post date (before or after), and the date you bookmarked it — combined with All (every rule must match) or Any (one is enough).
Hover actions on the Mac become the card’s action row on iOS. Right-click becomes long press. The Mac’s thumbnail-size slider becomes pinch-to-zoom on the grid. Pull down to sync.
SideEye puts your grid and the post’s own web page side by side, so you can read a thread without leaving your library. On iPhone it needs landscape; on iPad it needs full screen. Drag the divider to set the split — Keepers remembers where you put it.
Turn off Ask where to save file and Keepers saves straight to your chosen folder with no panel in the way. You can build the filename out of tokens — handle, account ID, post ID, post date, download date, a serial number, the media hash — choose the separator between them, and optionally file into token-aware subfolders. Settings shows a live preview of the complete resulting path.
To save everything from a selection at once, select the bookmarks and use Save Media in the selection bar.
Keepers is a reader for bookmarks you already made
Keepers doesn’t bookmark things for you. You bookmark on X or Bluesky the way you always have, and Keepers pulls that list down, keeps it, and makes it searchable, taggable, sortable and filterable — the things neither platform lets you do with a list that’s quietly grown to thousands of items.
How Keepers signs in
X has no bookmarks API. Keepers signs in the same way your browser does: you log into X inside a web view in the app, and the resulting session is kept in your Keychain. Nothing is typed into a form Keepers owns, no password is stored, and no third-party service sits between you and X.
Bluesky uses an App Password — a revocable, scoped credential Bluesky provides for exactly this purpose. Generate one under Bluesky → Settings → App Passwords. Keepers never asks for your main account password.
Removing things: what removes what
Three different things use the word “remove”:
Remove from an album — the bookmark stays in your library, and in any other album it belongs to. Nothing leaves X or Bluesky.
Delete an album — the album goes; every bookmark in it stays.
Remove from X / Remove from Bluesky — this deletes the bookmark on the platform itself, and it then disappears from Keepers too. This is the destructive one, and it’s always confirmed.
Remove an account (Settings → Accounts) — removes that account’s bookmarks, albums and smart albums from your devices. It doesn’t touch anything on X or Bluesky; your bookmarks there are untouched, and signing back in pulls them down again.
There’s deliberately no “delete from Keepers only.” Your library is a mirror of what you’ve bookmarked on the platform, and a local-only delete would quietly break that. Each of the confirmations above can be switched off individually in Settings → General.
Sync is incremental. Deep Scan isn’t.
An ordinary sync walks the top of your bookmark list and stops as soon as it recognises everything below. That’s what makes it fast, and it’s why a sync that finds nothing new isn’t a sync that failed.
Deep Scan for Removed Bookmarks (⇧⌘R) walks the entire list instead, one page at a time, and then flags the bookmarks the platform no longer lists — posts that were deleted, accounts that went private or away. It’s slow by design, which is why it’s a button you press rather than something that runs on its own.
X and Bluesky are the bottleneck, not Keepers
When a sync feels slow, it’s almost never Keepers thinking. It’s Keepers waiting. Your bookmark list comes back one page at a time, and both platforms rate-limit how fast you can ask for the next one. On top of that, every post carries media Keepers has to fetch separately.
What Keepers does instead is refuse to waste the requests it’s allowed: ordinary syncs stop as soon as they recognise what’s below; media is fetched once and cached; a sync interrupted halfway is not restarted from scratch. The first sync of a large library is the slow one. Every one after it is short.
Your library on iPhone and iPad
iOS syncs on its own, on-device, in the background. You never need to leave a Mac running for your phone to stay current. iOS decides when background time is available, so Keepers can’t promise a fixed interval — but you can always pull down to sync right now.
What syncs between your devices, and what doesn’t
Your library — bookmarks, albums, smart albums, tags, labels, accounts — syncs through your own iCloud account. It doesn’t pass through a Bloo Software server, because there isn’t one to pass through.
The AI index does not sync. It’s derived data: cheap to rebuild, specific to the device, and no business of your iCloud storage quota. Turn a feature on on a second device and that device builds its own index locally.
Images live on X’s and Bluesky’s servers, not in your library
Keepers stores the addresses of the images and videos in your bookmarks, not the files. When you scroll your library, the media is fetched from X’s or Bluesky’s servers and cached locally.
That means Keepers is a permanent record of the text, the author, the links and your own organisation — all of which live in your library and survive anything. It is not, on its own, a permanent record of the pictures. If a post is deleted, or an account goes private, or the platform expires an old media URL, that image will eventually stop loading in Keepers too.
What Keepers stores, and how much space it takes
Measured on a real library of about 6,900 bookmarks covering roughly 4,200 images and videos:
Your library — about 41 MB. Every bookmark, album, smart album, tag, label and account, plus iCloud sync bookkeeping.
The AI index — about 50 MB, or roughly 7 KB per bookmark, and only if you’ve turned the AI features on. It’s a disposable cache: never synced, rebuilt automatically if damaged.
Cached images and video — up to 512 MB, capped by Keepers. macOS and iOS can purge this whenever they need the space.
What the free version does
Keepers is free up to 1,000 bookmarks, with every feature unlocked — not a crippled mode, just a smaller library. Past 1,000, sync pauses rather than silently dropping bookmarks, and both the menu bar and Settings tell you exactly where you stand. Keepers Unlimited removes the limit across all your accounts.
One subscription, all your devices
An App Store subscription covers the Mac app and the iPhone and iPad app together — don’t buy it twice.
A licence bought on our website works on every Mac and iPhone you use Keepers on. Activate it under Settings → License with the email you bought with and the key from your purchase email; we send a six-digit code to confirm, and that activates the device. There’s a Deactivate button for when you move to a new machine.
The AI features are on-device, optional, and honest about it
Everything under Settings → AI Features uses on-device machine learning. Nothing runs until you turn it on. Turning one back off loses nothing — switch it on again and it resumes where it stopped. No API key, no account, no upload.
Semantic search finds bookmarks by what they’re about rather than by the exact words in them. Semantic results appear below a divider, underneath your ordinary results — additive, never a replacement, and they respect whatever filter you’re already in.
Read text in screenshots reads the text inside your images so it becomes searchable. This is the only feature that goes to the network: every image is fetched once to be read. Reading your existing library is a separate switch, because it’s a different order of cost entirely. On iPhone and iPad that historical pass is Wi-Fi-only by default.
Tidy your backlog groups bookmarks that look like they’re about the same thing, so you can name and tag a whole group at once. It needs semantic search on first.
Getting started
Does Keepers bookmark things for me?
No. You bookmark on X or Bluesky as usual, and Keepers gives you somewhere to actually work with the result.
Do I need an API key or a developer account?
No. You sign into X inside the app, exactly as you would in a browser. Bluesky uses an App Password you generate yourself.
Why does Bluesky want an “App Password” rather than my password?
Because that’s the credential Bluesky built for this — scoped to what an app needs and revocable at any time, without touching your account password. Generate one under Bluesky → Settings → App Passwords.
Can I use more than one account?
Yes — several X accounts, several Bluesky accounts, or a mix. Switch between them in the sidebar; each account’s bookmarks stay separate.
Do I need a Mac for the iPhone app to work?
No. iOS syncs on-device, on its own.
Does Keepers work with anything other than X and Bluesky?
Not today. Those two are what it does properly.
Nothing is syncing
Sync stopped and says “Log in again.”
Your X session expired — they don’t last forever. Log in again inside Keepers and sync picks up where it left off. Nothing in your library is lost while a session is expired; it just stops growing.
“Bluesky session expired. Please sign in again.”
The same thing on the Bluesky side. Sign in again with your App Password. If you revoked that App Password in Bluesky, generate a new one first.
Sync mentions a “queryId.”
X changes the internal identifiers its own website uses without notice, and a sync can hit one that’s moved. Opening a bookmark in the in-app browser, or logging in again, is usually enough to recover on its own. If it keeps failing, email us — that’s a message we want, because it means X moved something and we need to ship a fix.
Sync is stuck on “Waiting for iCloud.”
Keepers is waiting for iCloud to hand over your account state, and it usually clears by itself. If it doesn’t, check you’re signed into iCloud in System Settings, then quit and reopen Keepers.
Sync finished but nothing new appeared.
That’s usually correct behaviour, not a failure — an ordinary sync stops as soon as it recognises everything below your newest bookmarks. If you’re looking for something older, or want to know what’s disappeared from the platform, run Deep Scan for Removed Bookmarks (⇧⌘R).
Sync is very slow.
The first sync of a large library is mostly waiting on X or Bluesky to hand over the next page, plus fetching the media it finds. Later syncs are short because they stop early.
Can I stop a sync?
Yes — ⌘. from the menu bar, or the stop control in the app. Everything captured so far is kept; the next sync continues rather than restarting.
Missing or changed bookmarks
Bookmarks I deleted on X are still in Keepers.
They stay until a Deep Scan notices they’re gone. Run ⇧⌘R and Keepers will flag what the platform no longer lists.
Some images stopped loading.
The post, the account, or the media URL is gone on the platform’s side. Keepers stores the addresses of images, not the files, so it can show you a picture only as long as X or Bluesky will still serve it. The bookmark’s text, author, links and your own tags are unaffected — those are yours and they stay. If you want the picture to survive too, save it while you can.
A bookmark is here twice.
Send us a screenshot at hey@bloosoftware.com. Keepers deduplicates on the platform’s own ID, so this shouldn’t happen, and if it does we want to see it rather than guess.
Your library across devices
My bookmarks aren’t showing up on my other Mac or my iPhone.
Check that both devices are signed into the same iCloud account, that iCloud sync is on in Settings on both, and give the first sync a few minutes. Changing the iCloud sync setting takes effect at the next launch, so quit and reopen after switching it.
Can I take my library with me?
Yes. Export Keepers Library… (⇧⌘E) writes a single file containing your bookmarks, albums, smart albums and accounts. Import Keepers Export… (⇧⌘I) reads it back. An export made by a newer version of Keepers won’t import into an older one — update the app and try again.
Is a Keepers export a backup?
Of your library and your organisation, yes. It is not a backup of your images; those are saved separately with Save Media.
Searching and finding
What does the search bar actually search?
Post text, the author’s handle, your own tags, and the alt text on images. With Read text in screenshots turned on, it also searches the text Keepers has read out of your images. Matching ignores case and accents, and matches anywhere in a word, not just the start.
What’s the difference between the results above and below the divider?
Above the divider: exact matches, where the words you typed are literally present. Below: semantic matches, bookmarks that are about what you asked even though they don’t contain those words. The second list only appears when semantic search is on and has finished reading your library.
Semantic search is on but returns nothing.
Either the one-time library pass hasn’t finished — Settings → AI Features shows its progress — or nothing in your library scored highly enough. There’s a similarity floor, deliberately, so that the second list is worth reading.
Can I combine search with a filter or a smart album?
Yes, and the semantic results respect it too. A bookmark outside your current filter can’t appear under the divider no matter how well it scores.
How do tag suggestions work?
They’re type-ahead against the tags you’ve already used, so your tag vocabulary stays consistent instead of sprouting five spellings of the same idea. Nothing about it is AI, and it works whether or not the AI features are on.
Media and downloads
Where do saved images go?
Wherever you tell them to. Settings → Downloads sets a default folder, whether you see a save panel each time, how filenames are composed, and whether files are filed into subfolders. There’s a live preview of the full path.
Can I save everything from a batch at once?
Yes — select the bookmarks, then Save Media in the selection bar.
My saved filenames are all the same shape and I want something else.
Rebuild them in Settings → Downloads. Tokens available include the author’s handle, account ID, post ID, post date, download date, a serial number, and the media hash, with your choice of separator between them.
The save panel says my download folder isn’t available.
Usually because the folder was moved, renamed, or lives on a drive that isn’t connected. Keepers tells you rather than failing silently, and falls back to asking. Pick the folder again in Settings → Downloads.
Can I watch videos in Keepers?
Yes, in the media viewer, including fullscreen with a transport bar you can drag wherever you like.
Speed and storage
The first sync is slow.
It’s walking your whole bookmark list a page at a time and fetching the media it finds, at whatever rate the platform allows. Later syncs stop as soon as they recognise everything below the newest arrivals.
Deep Scan takes a long time.
It’s walking the entire list — that’s what it’s for, and why it’s never automatic. It reports what it found at the end.
Keepers is using a lot of disk.
Most of it is the media cache, which is capped at 512 MB and which macOS and iOS can purge whenever they need the space. Your actual library is far smaller — on the order of 40 MB for 7,000 bookmarks — and the AI index, if you’ve enabled it, adds roughly 7 KB per bookmark.
The grid is slow to scroll.
Try a smaller thumbnail size in the status bar on Mac, or pinch to zoom out on iPhone and iPad. If it’s still slow, tell us how many bookmarks you have — that’s the number we need.
Licence and purchase
What do I get for free?
Everything, up to 1,000 bookmarks. Past that, sync pauses until you upgrade. Nothing is deleted and nothing is hidden.
I subscribed on my iPhone. Do I need to buy the Mac app too?
No. One App Store subscription covers both.
I bought on the website. How do I activate?
Settings → License. Enter the email you bought with and the key from your purchase email; we send a six-digit code to confirm and that activates the device. Use Deactivate when you move to a new machine.
I subscribed through the App Store but I’m running the direct download.
The direct build has no App Store receipt to read, so Restore Purchases can’t help it. Email us at hey@bloosoftware.com and we’ll sort you out.
Restore Purchases isn’t finding my subscription.
Check you’re signed into the same Apple Account that bought it. If you bought on our website rather than the App Store, use Settings → License instead — Apple has no record of a web sale, so Restore can’t find one.
How do I cancel?
Through Apple, like any other App Store subscription: Settings → Apple Account → Subscriptions on iPhone, or the Manage Subscription link in Keepers’ own Subscription settings. Your library stays; it simply stops growing past 1,000.
Something’s wrong
Keepers is asking me to confirm too much, or not enough.
Settings → General has separate switches for confirming before removing from X or Bluesky, before removing from an album, and before deleting an album.
I removed something from an album by accident.
Removing from an album never deletes the bookmark. It’s still in your library and in any other album it belongs to.
I removed a bookmark from X by accident.
That one is real, and it happened on X’s side as well as ours. Bookmark the post again on X and the next sync brings it back — though your tags and album memberships for it won’t return with it.
Clicking a bookmark opens the wrong browser.
Settings → General → Open bookmarks in. Choose your system default, a specific installed browser, or Keepers’ own in-app browser.
I signed out of an account and want it back.
Sign in again. Your bookmarks are still on the platform, and the next sync pulls them down.
