Chatter Bookmarks
A Chatter Bookmark is a personal save action that lets a user keep a Chatter feed post for later by flagging it.
Definition
A Chatter Bookmark is a personal save action that lets a user keep a Chatter feed post for later by flagging it. The bookmarked post collects in the Bookmarked feed on the Chatter tab, and a star appears in the top-right corner of the post in its original feed. Bookmarks are private to the user who creates them. No one else can see which posts a person has bookmarked, so the feature works like a saved-posts list on a social network.
Chatter Bookmarks exist because feeds in an active org move quickly, and a useful post can scroll out of easy reach within hours. Bookmarking is the lightweight way to set a post aside without reposting it, replying, or copying a link. The feature is current in Lightning Experience, where Bookmarked is one of the standard feeds on the Chatter tab alongside What I Follow, To Me, Company Highlights, and My Drafts.
How Chatter Bookmarks behave across the feed, the API, and mobile
Bookmarking a post and the star marker
To bookmark a post in Lightning Experience, a user opens the actions menu on the feed post and chooses Bookmark. The action is a toggle. Choosing Bookmark again on the same post removes it. Once a post is bookmarked, Salesforce shows a star in the top-right corner of that post in its original feed, so the user can tell at a glance which items are already saved. The bookmark is stored as a per-user flag on the feed item, not as a change to the post itself. The author of the post is not notified, and the post text, comments, and likes stay exactly as they were. Because the flag is tied to the viewing user, two people looking at the same post see different bookmark states. One may see the star, the other may not. This per-user model is what makes Bookmarks a private organization tool rather than a social signal. A bookmark count, where it is exposed through the API, reflects how many distinct users saved the post, not a public badge that everyone sees on the post in the feed.
The Bookmarked feed on the Chatter tab
Saved posts gather in the Bookmarked feed, reachable from the Chatter tab in Lightning Experience. The Chatter tab lists several standard feeds, and Bookmarked sits among them next to What I Follow, To Me, Company Highlights, and My Drafts. Selecting Bookmarked filters the view to only the posts the current user has saved, newest activity first. This gives a person a single place to return to reference material without hunting through the main feed. The feed updates live. Removing a bookmark from a post drops it out of the Bookmarked feed immediately. In Salesforce Classic, Bookmarks had a more prominent home as its own filter under the Chatter feed, so longtime users sometimes expect a dedicated tab. In Lightning the same capability is present, just grouped with the other feeds on the Chatter tab. The Bookmarked feed is read-only in the sense that it is a filtered view. Users still interact with each post normally, liking, commenting, or sharing from within the saved list.
Bookmarks compared with Chatter Favorites
Bookmarks and Chatter Favorites are both personal save tools, and people often confuse them, but they save different things. A Chatter Bookmark saves a single feed post so it lands in the Bookmarked feed. A Chatter Favorite saves a broader entity such as a list view, a topic feed, or a search, and those collect in the Favorites area of the app. Put simply, bookmark one post, favorite a whole stream. The practical test is what you want to come back to. If it is a specific announcement or a single answer in a thread, bookmark it. If it is an ongoing source like everything tagged with a topic, make that a favorite instead. Both are private to the user and neither notifies anyone. Knowing the split saves time, because a user who tries to bookmark a list view, or favorite a single post, is reaching for the wrong control. The two features overlap in spirit but never in target, so they sit side by side in most heavy Chatter users' habits without stepping on each other.
Bookmarks compared with following a Topic
Following a Topic and bookmarking a post answer different needs. When a user follows a Topic, every post tagged with that topic flows into their feed going forward. It is a subscription to a subject. A bookmark, by contrast, pins one specific post that already exists. Topics are about the future stream, bookmarks are about a known item. A common pattern combines the two. A user follows the topics that matter to their role so relevant posts surface automatically, then bookmarks the handful of posts in that stream worth keeping permanently. Following casts a wide net, bookmarking keeps the few items worth holding onto. Neither is a substitute for the other. Following a busy topic without bookmarking means the good posts still scroll away. Bookmarking without following means a user has to find the good posts manually first. Used together, topics feed discovery and bookmarks handle retention, which is why active Chatter users tend to lean on both at once rather than picking one.
Working with bookmarks in Apex and the Chatter REST API
Bookmarks are programmable through Connect in Apex and the Chatter REST API, not just the UI. In Apex, the ConnectApi.ChatterFeeds class exposes methods to add and remove a bookmark on a feed element, so automation can save a post on a user's behalf. Each feed element carries a bookmark capability, and the property that tells whether the current context user has saved an item is isBookmarkedByCurrentUser. Reading that flag lets a developer branch logic, for example skipping a post that the user already saved. On the REST side, Chatter exposes a bookmarks feed resource that returns the saved posts for the context user, mirroring what the Bookmarked feed shows in the UI. A practical use is a small utility that bookmarks every post mentioning a release name, giving a team a curated reading list without manual clicks. Because the API acts as the context user, bookmarks created programmatically still land in that user's private Bookmarked feed and stay invisible to others. Treat the API as a way to automate the same per-user save, not as a way to bookmark on someone else's behalf in a way they would not expect.
Bookmarks in the Salesforce mobile app
The Salesforce mobile app surfaces the Bookmarked feed alongside the other Chatter feeds, so saving and revisiting works the same on a phone as on a desktop. The interaction is a tap on the post's action menu, then Bookmark, and the star marker appears just as it does in the browser. Because the bookmark is stored per user on the server, a post saved on mobile shows up in the Bookmarked feed on desktop and the reverse, with no syncing step for the user to think about. This makes a read-now-act-later habit easy. A user skimming the feed during a commute can bookmark anything worth a closer look, then open the Bookmarked feed at a desk to deal with the saved items properly. The shared, server-side storage is what makes that cross-device flow work. There is no separate mobile bookmark list to reconcile. One Bookmarked feed serves every surface the user signs into, which keeps the mental model simple and avoids the trap of saving something on one device and losing track of it on another.
Practical habits and limits to keep in mind
A few patterns make bookmarks more useful and a few cautions keep them honest. Reference posts such as policy announcements, setup how-tos, and well-answered questions are the best candidates, because they hold value long after they were posted. Time-sensitive posts are weaker candidates. If something needs action by a deadline, an at-mention or a task is more reliable than a bookmark a user may never reopen. The Bookmarked feed has no built-in folders or tags, so it is a flat list ordered by activity. That means it rewards occasional pruning. Removing bookmarks once the post has served its purpose keeps the list short enough to scan. It also helps to remember that a bookmark is a private memory aid, not a public endorsement. A high bookmark count on a post, where visible through the API, signals broad personal interest but does not mean the content is approved or official. Treating the Bookmarked feed as a personal reading shelf, cleaned now and then, gets the most out of the feature without expecting it to behave like a full task system.
Trust & references
Cross-checked against the following references.
Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Chatter Bookmarks.
Hands-on resources to go deeper on Chatter Bookmarks.
About the Author
Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He runs salesforcedictionary.com to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.
Test your knowledge
Q1. What object does clicking the Bookmark icon on a Chatter post actually flag?
Q2. Where do bookmarked posts collect for retrieval in Lightning Chatter?
Q3. What scope of visibility do Chatter Bookmarks have in an org?
Discussion
Loading discussion…