The case for keeping your own index has already been made across several of these pages: sites close, references die, favourites lists evaporate. This one is about the practical build. What to record, in what format, where to keep it, and how to make it something you actually maintain rather than a project you abandon after three weeks.
Plain text and nothing else
No app, no database, no service. A text file opens on every device made in the last forty years and will open on every device made in the next forty. It cannot be discontinued, acquired, or paywalled, and it does not need an account.
A spreadsheet is acceptable if you like columns, though it adds a dependency for very little gain. The one thing to avoid is any tool that stores your list in its own format on somebody else's server, which reintroduces exactly the fragility you are trying to escape.
The same durability argument applies to the work itself, as covered on the page about link rot.
Five fields and a line
| Field | Example use |
|---|---|
| Title | Searchable anywhere, survives closures |
| Artist or circle | The route to more of the same |
| Date added | Tells you what you liked when |
| Source | Where you found it, for rechecking |
| One line of why | Turns a list into something you reread |
Resist adding more. Every extra column is another thing to fill in, and the fields that get skipped are the ones that make the file inconsistent. Five is already generous; three would work. The goal is a file you can add to in fifteen seconds while doing something else.
The last field is the one people skip and the one that makes the file worth keeping. Six words is enough: slow, warm light, good ending. Without it you will have a list of names and no idea which matched which mood.
Keeping it private and safe
Store the file inside an encrypted container if the device is shared or backed up to a family account. Most systems include this now and it takes minutes to set up. A file named notes in a documents folder is not privacy on a device other people touch.
Then keep two copies in different places, because one copy is not a backup. An encrypted archive on a second device or a small drive is enough. This is the same reasoning as the low-light privacy promise: decide what is stored and where before storing it.
Keeping it small enough to survive
The failure mode is growth. A file that reaches four hundred entries stops being read, and a list nobody reads is storage rather than an index. Prune once or twice a year: anything you have not returned to and cannot remember goes.
Deleting feels wasteful and is not. The value is in the entries you actually revisit, and everything else is dilution. Thirty good lines beat four hundred forgotten ones, which is the argument made for collections on building a gallery of your own.
The ten-minutes-a-month habit
Once a month, open the file, add anything you meant to record, delete anything dead, and note the date you checked. Ten minutes. That single habit is the difference between an index and a file you started once, and it is short enough to actually happen.
Pair it with something you already do monthly if remembering is the problem. Paying a bill, a recurring calendar entry, whatever exists. The habit fails on memory rather than on effort, and attaching it to an existing routine fixes the actual failure.
Add entries at the moment you find something rather than at the end of a session, because the end of a session is when you close everything and forget. One line, immediately, is the version that works.
An index that outlives the sites
Plain text, five fields, encrypted, backed up twice, pruned yearly, checked monthly. That is the entire system, and it will still work when every library you currently use has changed hands or disappeared, which on the evidence of this field is a matter of when.
What goes in it should meet the same standard as everything else here: fictional adults, unmistakably grown, credited makers, nothing taken from creators who asked for it to be removed. That is on the understanding of this house.