In this guide
The problem: scattered research
Most browser extensions treat each feature in isolation. Your highlights panel knows nothing about your reading list. Your todos don't know they belong to the same client project as the snippets you wrote last week. Finding everything related to one topic means switching between four or five panels and mentally filtering each one.
This is fine for light use. It breaks down the moment you're managing multiple clients, writing a dissertation with dozens of sources, or running a side project alongside your day job.
Projects solve this by adding one piece of metadata — which project does this item belong to? — to every content type in Pinodock. Once assigned, items can be viewed together regardless of type.
What is a Pinodock Project?
A Project is a named container with three attributes: a name, an emoji, and a color. It holds references to items across four content types: Highlights, Reading List, Snippets, and Todos.
Projects are not folders in the file-system sense — items don't move anywhere. They stay in their original panels (your highlights stay in the Highlights panel, your todos stay in Todos). The project is a filter applied on top: you can view all items for a project together, or filter any panel to show only items assigned to a specific project.
Creating a project
Navigate to the Projects tab in the Pinodock sidebar (look for the 📁 icon). The Projects panel shows an overview grid of all your projects.
Click + New project to create one:
- Choose an emoji that represents the project (click the emoji field and type or paste any emoji)
- Type a name — "Client A", "Year 3 Biology", "Side Project", "Home Renovation"
- Pick a color from the eight-color palette — this color appears on all badges and filters related to this project
- Click Create
The project appears as a card on the overview grid immediately, showing its name, emoji, and item count (zero until you start assigning items).
| Field | Purpose | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Emoji | Visual identifier on cards and badges | 📊 for a client project, 🔬 for research |
| Name | Human-readable label shown everywhere | "Acme Corp Q3 Pitch" |
| Color | Accent color for badges, filters, borders | Blue for work, green for personal |
Assigning highlights, todos, and reading items
Every item in Highlights, Reading List, Snippets, and Todos now has a project assignment control. The UI is consistent across all four panels:
From the Highlights panel
Each highlight row has a small ▼ tag / project toggle at the bottom of the row. Click it to expand the assignment controls. A project picker dropdown appears — select your project from the list. The highlight immediately shows a colored badge with the project name. Click the badge to remove the assignment.
From the Todos, Snippets, and Reading List panels
The same expand-to-assign pattern applies across all panels. Every item has the project picker and tag input available without opening a modal or leaving the panel.
From the Project view
You can also assign items from inside a project's detail view — navigate to Projects, click a project, and any unassigned items visible there (if you've filtered the view) can be assigned directly.
Adding tags to items
Tags are free-form text labels you add to individual items. They're secondary to projects — while a project provides the primary context, tags let you add specificity within or across projects.
To add a tag, expand the assignment row on any item and click in the tag input. Type a tag name and press Enter or comma to add it. Tags are automatically lowercased and spaces become hyphens (design review becomes #design-review). Press Backspace to remove the last tag without retyping.
Tags appear as small colored pill badges on each item row. Click the × on a tag badge to remove it without opening the editor.
urgent, done, blocked), category (frontend, research, meeting-notes), time (q3, 2026), or person (alice, client-review).
The project view — everything in one place
Click any project card on the Projects overview to open its detail view. This is where the system pays off: you see all four content types together, grouped by type, in a single scrollable page.
The detail view layout:
- ✏️ Highlights — text you've marked on web pages related to this project
- 📚 Reading — articles and pages saved to your reading list for this project
- ✂️ Snippets — reusable text and code snippets filed under this project
- ✅ Todos — tasks and action items for this project
Each section only appears if there are items assigned to it. An empty project shows a helpful prompt explaining how to assign items.
A tag filter bar appears at the top of the detail view if any items in the project have tags. Click a tag chip to filter all four content sections to only items with that tag. Click it again (or click "All") to reset.
Filtering by project or tag
You don't have to go to the Projects panel to use projects. Every content panel has a collection filter bar that appears as soon as you've created at least one project:
A horizontal row of pill buttons appears above the item list: All plus one button per project. Click a project to filter the panel to only that project's items. The filter is per-panel — Highlights can be filtered to "Client A" while Todos shows all items.
This means projects add value even when you're working inside a specific panel. If you're reviewing your highlights after a research session, filtering to the relevant project shows only the highlights that matter right now.
Real-world use cases
Freelancers and consultants
Create one project per client. Highlight key paragraphs from their briefing documents, save their brand guidelines to the reading list, write reusable email templates as snippets, and track deliverables as todos — all under one client project. When a client calls, open their project view and everything is there.
Students and researchers
Create one project per subject or module (Biology, Economics, Dissertation). Save research papers to the reading list under the relevant subject, highlight key quotes and methods in those papers, and track readings to complete as todos. Tag highlights with citation or methodology to filter during essay writing.
Side project builders
One project for your side project. Highlights from competitor research, reading list items for tutorials and documentation, todos for the sprint backlog, and snippets for reusable code templates — all visible together when you open the project view on a weekend working session.
Home projects
Create a "Home Renovation" project. Save contractor quotes to the reading list, highlight key measurements and specifications from product pages, track outstanding tasks as todos. Tag items as kitchen or bathroom to filter by room.
Projects and Pro sync
Project assignments (the collectionId on each item) and tags sync across devices for Pinodock Pro users. The project definitions themselves also sync. This means a highlight you assigned to a project on your work computer appears under that project when you open Pinodock on your laptop.
The sync covers: highlights, reading list items, snippets, todos, and their project/tag metadata. Clipboard history and AI chat sessions are intentionally excluded from sync for privacy.
Projects are the answer to "where did I save that?" — not a folder system you have to maintain, but a lightweight filter that makes your existing content findable by context instead of by type.
→ Read the complete Pinodock guide