Any one using Matter in view to replace Instapaper and Pocket, etc

Good workflow. I’ve been using Instapaper mainly for highlighting and annotating, but I prefer GoodLinks for reading. I’ll try some of your tips.

I’m told Matter does have a web app.

https://web.getmatter.app/

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Great points on Matter’s privacy stance. I am also a fan of GoodLinks. I wish they’d add highlighting (with access to sync them to something like Obsidian). Highlighting is what keeps me with Instapaper and had me consider Matter in the first place.

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I’m hoping that some of the development energy that’s getting poured into the note-taking space gets redirected to the reading-and-annotating space. MarginNote is close, but the last time I checked it was PDF-centric. I need something that accommodates other formats.

Out of curiosity, what specific formats are you looking for?

This looks promising, I’m eagerly waiting for its release.

https://readwise.io/read

Epub, primarily.

(20 Characters)

I’m eagerly awaiting this too because their spaced repetition review is really good and they already have highlight sync down.

Does anyone have access to the beta? (I know @MacSparky mentioned he does)

Their announcement post back in September is very forward-looking so I’m pretty excited to see how it works and what kind of new toys it could provide for our workflows.

I could be wrong, but I thought MarginNote has always supported both PDF and ePub since its inception? The ePub features are much more limited compared to PDF, but that’s probably due to the nature of the ePub file format.

Yes, you can indeed port an epub document into MarginNote, but, as you point out, the epub features are limited. (You can’t bookmark an epub, for instance.)

There are so many things to like about MarginNote! (The functionality of the “Research” button that pops up as part of the right-click menu when you highlight text, for instance.) Here are the things that keep me from using it routinely:

  1. It’s not a fully kitted out reader app. As a tool for reading, it’s just not as friendly and flexible as Clearview on the macOS or Marvin 3 on iOS. (I’m not sure either are under active development anymore.)

  2. The share sheet functionality is crippled and it’s almost impossible to get anything out of MarginNote and into another app. That’s fine if you’re living in MarginNote, but not so fine if you want to make it part of a workflow with other PKM tools. (I can export notes and highlights from both Clearview and Marvin 3 to DEVONthink via the share sheet, for instance.)

  3. It’s Tinderbox-level impenetrable on first use. I mean, the user manual is a mind map, for heaven’s sake, not a document with a table of contents and step-by-step instructions on how to do things. (The mind map contains embedded little screencasts, but no actual “how to” text that I can discover.) I’m willing to invest time into learning how to use an app, but I’m out of patience with apps that take the total immersion approach.

Please note that I’m not criticizing MarginNote for not being the app I want it to be. There are people for whom it is exactly the tool they want and need. (The only real criticism I’d level at the developer is the lack of a proper user manual.) It doesn’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean its a bad app.

Here’s a recommendation for Articles+, which is a very nice — but frustrating! — app for reading, highlighting, and annotating articles.

Now here’s the frustrating part: If Articles+ can’t parse the article, then it just gives you an error message and rejects the link. This is a problem for me because I use my RIL app for videos, Reddit threads, threads on Discourse forums, Twitter threads — anything I might want to read or view later.

I’m totally OK if my RIL app can’t parse those things. Just save the URL for me and throw me out to the web browser to actually consume content it can’t parse. I’m fine with that. It’s what Instapaper and Pocket do.

I have suggested this to the Articles+ developer and he has responded nope not interested. Articles+ is for reading, annotating, and highlighting articles. That is all that it does.

So I don’t use Articles+. But I did for several weeks, and it worked great, and others here might find it useful.

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Thanks for the link! I gave it a test drive and I like the way it handles notes and highlights. I don’t like the way it handles images, which is basically not at all. Enough of what I read is image dependent to make this a real downside—enough to offset the virtues of the way it handles highlights and notes.

Like you, I tend to fling anything I want to review and process into my RIL app. Usually, it’s text but sometimes it’s a video, or a thread, or a media file. GoodLinks will parse it if it can, and if it can’t, it will capture the link. (It’s actually pretty good with video.)

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I can’t say too much since I’m in the Readwise beta … but that post is true to form with what I’ve seen from the developers. They really want to make some thing special. Now for the hard work of making it so.

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Aww man, I love reading in Marvin 3, but I too feel like it’s abandonware at this point.

I have made peace with this fact by only using it to annotate and help me with digesting the material. The archival process is done manually by creating Markdown notes in DEVONthink instead of exporting. I can live with it, but I do understand the pain.

Oh wow that’s amazing! Why couldn’t I find this before? :thinking:

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Thanks for starting this thread - it has been really helpful.

I’ve been playing round with Matter for the last week or so and, feel a bit mixed about it so it has been good to read other people’s experiences.

I like the personalised email address that I can use for newsletters and it generally has a nice reading experience, but all-in-all it’s not enough for me to commit to another subscription, so I’m still going to be keeping my fingers crossed for the Readwise product.

My main issues for me are that:

  • I’m not sure the whole “writer not website” thing works for me. I either like specific websites for their general content or the main writers I follow are writing on their own domains anyway.
  • On that theme, I’d love to be able to add RSS feeds into Matter, but I guess that’s not the focus of the app.
  • As someone else mentioned, the whole Discover tab doesn’t work for me either. I have no friends who are using Matter. So the random comments other people make don’t hold a lot of value for me and the articles there feel a bit random
  • As others have mentioned, I use DT for storing docs (in PDF format) as reference points for Obsidian. The issue I have with Matter though is that docs I export as a PDF don’t include highlights that I’ve made, which rather undermines the whole point of reading the documents in Matter for me.

Anyway, thanks again for the thread - good to hear other people’s thoughts!

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I keep Readwise and Instapaper and they work well together. Was looking at Matter to replace Instapaper but not ready to make the move until I see the full picture.

Reeder does such a great job and consistently for years now. Hard to let go of especially since it’s pretty focused and paid so we know what we’re getting and what the business model it. In this case I stick with what works especially since It’s well supported.

I actually got a newsletter by email from Matter :grimacing: Was about to delete it annoyedly but then actually found it interesting in terms of targeted content :joy: (Yes truly ironic I know)

So just maybe could be relevant though I’d prefer not to get it by email.

I’m still testing their PDF feature and was initially excited but doesn’t seem to work perfectly (yet?)

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Yeah, the problem is that my whole reading/note-taking process is becoming really bloated.

Currently:

  • RSS feeds go into Unread
  • Newsletters are going into Matter
  • I’ve been playing around with Refind for the last month and have finally got recommendations coming as I want them.
  • Read-it-Later links are going into DevonThink - this isn’t ideal because things just get clogged in there.

Ideally I’d like DT to be the reference source for all highlighted and approved documents. But Instapaper/Pocket would be another subscription, GoodReads doesn’t do highlights and Matter (as mentioned doesn’t seem to export highlights).

So I’ve got my reading material spread across three different apps (depending on where they come from) which makes it easy to miss things. I’m hoping the Readwise reader might be able to combine all these into one app - with finalised docs then just being shared to DT

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Possibly saving you a step: Kill-the-newsletter is an excellent free service for converting newsletters to RSS feeds.

One of the things that’s great about it is that it’s free in the old-school white-hat hacker sense of the word free. No ads. You don’t have to register. No privacy intrusions as far as I can see. Somebody created something useful, which can be run at very little cost, so they’re letting other people use it.

So now you can send your newsletters to Kill-the-newsletter, subscribe to the RSS feeds in Unread, and cancel your Matter subscription if you don’t get any other value out of it.

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Clearview is not under active development, but it has a successor! Clearview X. Not much in the way of new features, but a modernised interface. I think probably the best epub reader app for Mac.

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