Nostr Bookmark Backup Without Ever Touching a Private Key

You can back up your Nostr bookmarks with only your public key. Your bookmark list is a public event on the relays you use, so anything that knows your npub can read it. Birdfeeder does exactly that: you paste your npub, it saves the notes you bookmarked, and it never asks for your nsec.

Where are Nostr bookmarks stored?

On Nostr, your bookmarks are one list, defined in NIP-51. Your client publishes it to your relays as a single event (kind 10003, or 30003 for some clients). Every time you add or remove a bookmark, the client replaces that event with a new version. The list holds references to the notes you saved, not the notes themselves.

That means your bookmarks are only as safe as the relays that store the list and the notes. If a relay drops old events, or the author deletes a note, the bookmark can point at something that no longer loads.

How to back up your Nostr bookmarks

Nostr has no OAuth. Your identity is a keypair: an npub you can share, and an nsec that must stay private. So Nostr works a bit differently in Birdfeeder than X, Bluesky or Mastodon:

Sign up with X, Bluesky or Mastodon.
Go to Settings and paste your npub. Only the public half.
Birdfeeder reads your bookmark list from a few relays and saves the full text and media of each bookmarked note.

After that it checks your list every 30 minutes and saves new bookmarks. More on the Nostr bookmark backup page.

Does Birdfeeder need my nsec?

No. Birdfeeder never asks for or stores a Nostr private key. Reading a public bookmark list only needs the npub.

This has one effect you should know about. NIP-51 also allows a private, encrypted bookmark list. Reading that would need your nsec, so Birdfeeder doesn't import it. If your client stores bookmarks in the encrypted form, Birdfeeder will see an empty list.

Can I export my Nostr bookmarks?

Yes. Once your notes are in Birdfeeder, you can export them to CSV, TSV, JSON or Excel. For Nostr that's free on every plan. See Nostr bookmark export.

If you only want a quick look at a bookmark list, without signing up, there is a free tool: View and Export Nostr Bookmarks. Paste any npub, see its public bookmarks, and download them as CSV or JSON.

What else works with Nostr bookmarks

Saved notes get the same features as bookmarks from any other network: full-text search, the weekly email, private notes, and one archive together with your X, Bluesky and Mastodon bookmarks.