One Man Show

Back Written by Philipp

Bookmark Sidebar started as a personal project and quickly became huge. Everything you see is made by one developer (me, hi!).

My Name is Philipp König, and I'm a software Developer from Aalen, Germany.

My Background

My interest in software development started early. In the 2000s, I began experimenting with basic web development: creating skins for the browser game I played at the time (OGame), building and hosting websites for in-game alliances, and setting up forums.

From there, I moved into more technical projects. I developed small games using BlitzBasic (Does anyone know this?) and worked with friends on a browser-based game project. These early experiments taught me a lot about building interactive systems and working with limited tools.

After finishing school, I started working as a software developer in a professional environment. At the time mostly JavaScript/jQuery and PHP. After a few years in the industry, I began studying computer science and eventually completed my master’s degree. Even during my studies and professional work, I always kept side projects running in parallel — a way to explore new technologies and improve my skills continuously.

Today, I work as a Senior Fullstack Developer in a company I really enjoy working for. My day-to-day work includes designing and building distributed systems with microservices, configuring Kubernetes clusters, developing frontend applications, and building CI/CD pipelines to deploy and operate everything reliably. Basically, having a hand in everything.

The Browser Extension

Bookmark Sidebar was started during a different phase of my life, when I had significantly more free time. Studying computer science was relatively straightforward for me due to my prior experience, which gave me space to focus on building things outside of university.

At the time, I was not satisfied with the default bookmark management in Chrome, so I began building a small tool for myself. Eventually, I published it in the Chrome Web Store so others could use it as well. I never anticipated that it would grow beyond a niche personal project.

There was no marketing, no promotion, and no social media push... not even a single Reddit post. The extension grew organically over time and eventually reached over 500,000 users. That number still feels surprisingly large.

As usage grew, so did the feedback. Users started reporting issues, suggesting improvements, and sharing ideas. Many of these were implemented over time. I also helped people configure and adapt the extension to their workflows, and fixed issues as they appeared. The community contribution, including translations, expanded steadily and now covers more than 40 languages.

Current State

Bookmark Sidebar is not my full-time job. It is something I work on alongside my main career, in my free time.

The extension does not generate enough income to be my primary source of living. You can read more about this in a separate article.

This has a few direct consequences. The development cycles are slower and I need to carefully prioritize features. The main goal has always stayed the same: build something useful and keep it stable over time.

The extension is not designed to maximize revenue or scale into a business at any cost. It exists as a tool that hopefully makes working with bookmarks a bit better and more enjoyable.