Import from Pinboard

Move your entire Pinboard library into Batata in under a minute. Tags, timestamps, and the public/private flag all carry over.

Get your Pinboard export

  1. Sign in to Pinboard and go to pinboard.in/settings/backup.
  2. Click JSON to download a file like pinboard_export.json.

Upload to Batata

  1. Open Settings.
  2. Find the Import & Export section and click Import bookmarks.
  3. Select your export file — Batata detects the format automatically.
  4. A confirmation alert shows how many bookmarks were imported.

What carries over

  • URL (href field)
  • Title (descriptionfield in Pinboard's schema)
  • Notes (extended field)
  • Tags — space-separated tags become individual tags
  • Original timestamp — preserved as the save date in Batata
  • Private flag — Pinboard's shared: no maps to Batata's private flag

Dedup

If a URL already exists in your account, the import skips it. You'll see “skipped: N” in the success message.

Free tier limits

Free accounts cap at 100 bookmarks. If your Pinboard export has more, Batata imports up to the cap and tells you to upgrade for the rest. Existing imports stay in place — no data is lost when you upgrade.

What happens after import

Imported bookmarks land with archive_status = pending. A background worker then processes them in batches:

  • Fetches the page and archives the text
  • Generates AI summaries
  • Suggests auto-tags
  • Embeds the content for semantic search and Ask

Processing takes a few minutes for hundreds of bookmarks. Pages that fail to fetch (login-walls, bot blocks, dead links) are marked archive failed and stay in your library with title and tags intact.

Other formats we support

The same Import bookmarks button auto-detects several formats — just upload the file your old tool gave you:

  • Pinboard — JSON export (above), with full tags, notes, dates, and private flag.
  • Pocket — the ril_export.html file or the CSV export. Titles, tags, and save dates carry over.
  • Raindrop — the CSV export. Titles, notes, tags, and created dates carry over.
  • Browser bookmarks — the HTML bookmarks export from Chrome, Firefox, or Safari.

Have an export from somewhere else (Instapaper, Wallabag, …)? Reach out via the contact form — more adapters are easy to add.

Quick reference: Pinboard JSON schema

[
  {
    "href": "https://example.com",
    "description": "Title shown in Pinboard",
    "extended": "Optional notes",
    "tags": "tag1 tag2 tag3",
    "time": "2024-01-15T10:30:00Z",
    "shared": "no",
    "toread": "no"
  }
]