Memex

Name: Memex
Rating: 3.8130841121495327 (107 reviews)
Author: https://memex.garden

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.

Extension Productivity Education Communication Privacy & Security

By:

Users:

Rating:

Version:

3.20.14 Last updated: 2025-03-25

Creation date:

2020-07-01

Risk:

Permissions:

alarms
bookmarks
contextMenus
tabs
scripting
webNavigation
notifications
unlimitedStorage
storage
clipboardWrite

Host permissions:

<all_urls>

Size:

8.28MB

Email:

su*****@worldbrain.io

URLs:

Website ,Privacy policy

Full description:

Source:

Chrome Web Store

Updated:

16 hours ago

Ranking

# 7,370 ▲ 94

Other rankings

#558 in Workflow & Planning ▲ 2 #124 in summarize pdf keyword 49 ▼ 4

Other platforms

Memex (v3.20.9)

268 4.23

(56)

User reviews

Memex offers powerful annotation and knowledge management capabilities, integrating with popular tools and providing useful productivity features. However, many users report instability, buggy search functionality, and dissatisfaction with recent removal of full-text history search, which was a key feature. User support concerns include inability to delete accounts and intrusive UI elements. Despite these issues, ongoing development and improvements receive praise, though some users are wary of shifts toward paid features and closed-source development.

Pros

Allows annotation directly on webpages and PDFs, integrating well with tools like Obsidian.
Offers powerful search and knowledge management features enhancing productivity and personal knowledge management (PKM) workflows.
Continuously improving with frequent updates adding useful features like academic citations and PDF reading.
Provides offline-first data storage, keeping data on user's device and maintaining privacy.
Includes helpful support resources such as tutorials and good developer responsiveness.

Cons

The removal of the full-text history search indexing previously visited pages greatly diminished core functionality.
Significant bugs and instability, including crashes, buggy search (especially with special characters and CJK characters), and unreliable import/export features.
Lack of user account deletion capability and unresponsive support for account removal requests undermining user trust.
User interface issues like intrusive widgets (e.g., YouTube widget) that cannot be closed and a confusing or buggy UI experience.
Shift from open source to closed source and introduction of paid plans with no upfront mention, causing dissatisfaction among users invested in the tool.

Recent reviews

No mention of a paid service up front and their airtable questionnaire doesn't even work when you uninstall. Doesn't look like it will be around long.

Ji*****, 2025-06-13

Please do not install this extension under any circumstances. Once you install it and create a login account, you cannot delete the account. You can send an email to request to delete your account from the app, but there is no reply. There is a chat function and the developer is online, but there is no response when you request to delete your account.

ku*****, 2025-05-11

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.*****, 2025-02-14

View all user reviews ›

Extension safety

Risk impact

Risk impact measures the level of extra permissions an extension has access to. A low risk impact extension cannot do much harms, whereas a high risk impact extension can do a lot of damage like stealing your password, bypassing your security settings, and accessing your personal data. High risk impact extensions are not necessarily malicious. However, if they do turn malicious, they can be very harmful.

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

Risk likelihood measures the probability that a Chrome extension may turn malicious. This is determined by the publisher and the Chrome extension reputation on Chrome Web Store, the amount of time the Chrome extension has been around, and other signals about the Chrome extension. Our algorithms are not perfect, and are subject to change as we discover new ways to detect malicious extensions. We recommend that you always exercise caution when installing a Chrome extension.

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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