Memex

Search, annotate and organize what you've read online.

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Memex is a powerful Chrome extension designed for deep reading and knowledge management across the web. It enables individuals, teams, and communities to curate, annotate, and discuss important digital content such as websites, PDFs, and YouTube videos. Key features include full-text search of your annotations and bookmarks, highlighting and note-taking directly on web pages, and flexible organization through Spaces and a tab manager.

Users can collaborate seamlessly by sharing and discussing curated Spaces, link directly to annotations, and sync data effortlessly with tools like Obsidian, Readwise, and Logseq. Memex operates offline-first, ensuring your data is stored securely on your devices with optional cloud backup. Quick onboarding lets you import bookmarks from all major services while maintaining your folder structure. Its intuitive interface offers fast search shortcuts and easy annotation workflows, making it perfect for knowledge workers, researchers, and lifelong learners seeking better ways to manage and revisit web content.

Productivity Education Communication Privacy & Security

By:: https://memex.garden
Users:: 10,000+
Rating:: 3.87
(105)
Version:: 3.20.14 (Last updated: 2025-03-25)
Creation date:: 2020-07-01
Risk:: Very high risk impact Low risk likelihood
Permissions:: alarms
bookmarks
contextMenus
tabs
scripting
webNavigation
notifications
unlimitedStorage
storage
clipboardWrite
Host permissions:: <all_urls>
Size:: 8.68M
Email:: su*****@worldbrain.io
URLs:: Website ,Privacy policy
Full description:: See detailed description
Source:: Chrome Web Store
Updated:: a day ago

Ranking

# 6,967 ▼ 4

Other rankings

#578 in Workflow & Planning ▼ 5 #116 in summarize pdf keyword 42 ▼ 1 #239 in summarize youtube keyword 51 ▲ 2 #282 in summarize website keyword 48 ▲ 4

Other platforms

Memex (v3.20.9)

285 4.29

(55)

User reviews

Memex is praised for its powerful annotation capabilities, Obsidian integration, and frequent enhancements, making it valuable for productivity and research workflows. However, multiple users report bugs, unreliable search especially with special characters or CJK scripts, frustrating UI elements that block content, and controversial removal of important features like full-text history search. Account management issues also undermine user trust. Despite drawbacks, ongoing updates and an improved interface show promise.

Pros

Allows annotation directly on webpages and PDFs
Integrates with Obsidian for knowledge management
Includes useful features like YouTube tools and academic citation support
Improved user interface and frequent updates with new features
Free and open source with active developer engagement

Cons

Extension is buggy and unstable at times, causing crashes or feature failures
Search functionality is unreliable, especially with special characters and CJK (Chinese, Japanese, Korean) characters
Removal or deprecation of key features like full-text history indexing reduces usefulness
User interface elements like YouTube widgets lack easy dismiss options and can obstruct use
Account deletion process is unclear or unresponsive, causing trust issues

Recent reviews

Highly recommended. Everything and more than what I was hoping for. It hasn't been "very buggy" for me. It's working wonders with my PKM flow and the Youtube features are a game changer for my productivity. It's still in beta and the dev seems to respond quickly here. Hopefully the complainers don't undermine a noble effort and ruin it for the rest of us.

C. B., 2025-02-14

Handy features when it works, but very buggy. Don't count on being able to reliably import or export your bookmarks, sign in, sign out, or use features promised on the memex.garden website.

Aron Foster, 2025-02-05

I don't like leaving reviews but this tool has potential so I'm hoping this reaches the dev. I found this tool mainly on the hunt for an app which auto-indexes all the html on sites like stackoverflow so that I can go back and ctrl+f certain key words later on (regular history doesn't do this). Memex achieves this well enough as I can just hit alt-q on any notable site. So far, I have two issues with using Memex for the scenario I've explained above: The first is that the search function seems to break down as soon as there are special characters. e.g. I can search for 'clone' but as soon as I search for '.clone()' then the whole search breaks down. Please fix! The second issue: please get out of my way! All I am wanting to do right now is press alt+q and save the page for later, I do not need any widgets popping up on the site I'm using. If it's useful for me I will slowly start looking into it over time. I also don't see a way to remove the youtube video widget so I have had to add ###__MEMEX-YOUTUBE-INTERFACE-ROOT into my ad-blocker to take it out of the html once it has already been injected in, which seems redundant.

Matej Kondrot, 2024-11-17

View all user reviews

Extension safety

Risk impact

Memex requires a lot of sensitive permissions. Exercise caution before installing.

Risk impact analysis details

Critical Grants access to browser tabs, which can be used to track user browsing habits and history, presenting a privacy concern.
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Risk likelihood

Memex has earned a fairly good reputation and likely can be trusted.

Risk likelihood analysis details

High This extension has low user count. Unpopular extensions may not be stable or safe.
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