Bookmark aliases for Chrome

Why aliases beat bookmarks

Bookmarks ask you to remember where you put something. Aliases ask you to remember what it is. That difference is the whole idea. A bookmark lives in a folder you have to open, scan and click. An alias lives in your head, as a word you already think in: standup, payroll, roadmap, school.

The idea comes from the terminal. Developers have long kept aliases in their shell config so that a short word runs a long command. Many tech companies built the same thing for the web, an internal short-link service where one word opens the right page for everyone. Hive gives you that habit without the config file and without a server: aliases live in your Hive account and follow you to every computer you sign in to.

How Hive aliases work

Chrome lets an extension claim a keyword in the address bar. Hive’s keyword is go. When you type go and a space, Chrome switches into Hive mode and passes what you type next to Hive. Hive suggests every alias that starts with those letters, showing the alias and the name of the link it opens, so you can stop typing as soon as the right one appears.

Press Enter on a full alias, or pick a suggestion with the arrow keys, and the page opens in the current tab. The Hive icon in the toolbar flaps its wings to confirm the jump. Opening a link this way also counts toward its open count, so the links you use most rise to the top of the Hive Console.

Choosing aliases that stick

The best alias is the first word that comes to mind when you need the page. A few patterns work well:

• Single words for the things you open every day: standup, mail, calendar.
• Prefixes for families of links: pay-slips, pay-portal, pay-tax. Typing go pay shows all three.
• Personal shortcuts that only make sense to you: mom-photos, gym, recipes.

Aliases are short to type, but they don’t have to be cryptic. Hive shows the full link name next to every suggestion, so a slightly longer alias you can remember is better than a two-letter one you can’t.

Aliases for teams

Put a link in a shared group and its alias works for everyone in that group. New people don’t need a list of bookmarks on their first day; they need to know that go standup, go handbook and go oncall exist. When the standup moves to a new meeting room link, the owner edits it once and every alias in the team now points to the new address.

Hive watches for clashes. If two links in your groups use the same alias, both are marked so someone can rename one. A personal alias always beats a shared one for you, so you can keep your own go mail without disturbing the team’s.

Aliases and search work together

You won’t remember every alias, and you don’t have to. When a word doesn’t come to mind, open the Hive popup and search by name, URL, alias or tag instead. The two habits cover each other: aliases for the twenty links you use daily, search for the hundreds you open once a month.