# I built a native link app for several devices and platforms — when sync is actually worth it > Source: > Published: 2026-09-22 20:19:36+00:00 Picture this: you are on a train or a bus, reading interesting articles or code repos on your phone. You want to remember an article you just saw, for later, or use it in your daily work. How can I store links and files quickly without losing the context of the article or the repo behind the link? I can send myself an email or a chat message, or I can copy the link into some bookmark app. But the link alone is not a solution for me, and finding the information later is a pain. I miss the context, a summary, a title, or a category for the stored links and sources! After some research and tests of several apps and services, I could not find the right tool to help me organize linked information in a useful and easy way. I started building my own app to store and manage articles, video links, git repos, and images. An AI model can fill in a title, a summary, and categories when you allow that. For simple use, and so I could store links and files quickly from any app, I needed a good idea. My solution is the Share function that is already in the operating system. It is a very simple path: press Share, choose the LinkVault app, and the link or the file is stored automatically. The summary and the category are added when you allow AI processing. My first app I built as an offline version. That means the library lived on the device and was kept safe through the device backup. No account and no sync. AI processing of the links was already there, but only when you allow it. After a while my friends saw my app and wanted it too. My new goal was a version for several platforms, with sync across devices. That was the next challenge, especially solid sync. Now the ecosystem covers Apple iOS, macOS, Google Android, a Chromium extension, Microsoft Windows, an Edge extension, and a progressive web app (PWA). I grew up multilingual in Switzerland, and for us it is normal that websites and apps use more than one language. Already in the first version I had planned several languages, and I kept extending them during development. That peaked in the categories, which are now maintained centrally on the server, in more than one language. That means the categories are shown in the language the app is set to. A recipe link, for example, appears in the English app in the category “Recipes” and in the German app in “Rezepte”. With several devices it matters that the stored data is available on all of them. That is where sync is worth it. That way all the information is available in every work situation, in the browser, on any device, or in the app. To make sync across devices possible, I needed a fixed anchor for all the data, a secure backend that scales reliably, and a flexible login to build on. Every user who wants to sync has an account and a login. The account is the library of links and files. To keep support cases small, I use third-party login services: Apple and Google. In the end I decided to put all the apps in the stores and to build a proper marketing page: [LinkVault Professional](https://linkvault.pve.ch/en/apps). As you can imagine, this took longer than I expected. I am still working on the store reviews, on how the apps are presented, and on the first steps for new users. There is always work left that has nothing to do with technology. Feedback from other users told me it would be useful to have several logins on several devices, sharing the same account and the same library. That is how linked logins came about. You can now use several logins that share the same account and the same library. The hard part was the number of cases I had to respect. For example logging in and out independently, adding or removing a linked login from an account on its own, or the case where one login already has an account and you merge the libraries into one linked account and one library. Once linked logins and shared libraries were in place, I could build the team functions. I call these shared libraries workspaces. I call the users, with their permissions, a team and team members. Links and files got extra properties so they belong to a workspace, plus functions to copy or move them into workspaces. I did not forget managing the team, or inviting team members. With the team functions I could create real extra value compared with other tools. For me that is a real differentiator. In a team you share and manage the group's content. For example I made a recipes workspace that I share with my whole family as a team. Every user may add their own recipe links, documents, or photographed recipes in the team. On the technical side, ownership together with syncing the data was a real challenge. Joining and leaving were just as tricky. For example: if the owner closes a team, what should happen to the links? Leave them read-only for the members, remove them, or let the members take the shared links into their own library? There are many cases to support and to build. What a link or a file contains Links or files are stored with these properties: Once a link or a file is allowed for AI processing and has been processed, the title can change. Category and tags are filled in. Further links can come out of the text or out of a QR code. Those show up in the entry as extracted links. New links and new files have separate defaults. New files are private by default, new links are not. Installs: [linkvault.pve.ch/en/apps](https://linkvault.pve.ch/en/apps) I hope you like this story of how LinkVault Professional came to be, and perhaps you like the apps. Tell me your ideas, and how this app can be better for you and for me. **Always ask real people if you want real answers. Use AI as your tool, not as your god.** This text is written 100% by the author P.Groner.