In need of help with a workflow: Email -> Read later -> Annotate

Software
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Hi there!

Continuing my long journey of becoming a Mac Power User I’m now in need of some help.

I have subscribed to some people I like to read when they publish something out, like Cal Newport for example. However, now my email inbox has become unbearable and 60% -70% are just updates about my subscription.

Today in the morning while having a cup of coffee I’m looking at my email and notice a new article from a person I follow. I say at the moment I’m not able to read it, I want to read it later and if possible unsubscribe from the whole thing because my email is just too much now.

Then, I notice I really don’t have a workflow for this. My goal would be to unsubscribe to have an email JUST FOR BUSINESS and personal things I send, but at the same time have a place where I can follow the authors I’m interested in, save things from them to read later and lastly export the notes or highlights I make.

I appreciate your help and time, thank you.

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Make a folder in the Mail app On My Mac and go into Mail’s Settings and the Rules tab and add a rule that moves emailed articles from these senders to your new folder. They won’t be in your Inbox and you’ll be able to ignore or read them later. And it’s all automatic.

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Thanks! I will try that.

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I use Omnivore to handle newsletters. You can subscribe to or forward newsletters using an email they provide then read and mark up at your leisure.

Also has an Obsidian plug-in.

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Woe, this app looks great and it’s Open-source. I’ll check this one out. That forwarding of subscriptions seems neat.

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Readwise Reader offers very similar functionality. It has recently come out of beta, worth taking a look.

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I couldn’t find information regarding their pricing when the beta finishes. Do you know something about it?

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@Jvet – You’ll find pricing information here. I’ve been happily using the Readwise service for years and the addition of Reader makes their offering even more attractive.

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Wow, 96 dollars a year. I’ll have to give it a go for a month and see if it’s worth it for me. Thanks for sharing!

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I can’t tell if the pricing is for Readwise, Reader or both… any insight?

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Reader is currently free while in beta.

From: Readwise Reader | The first read-it-later app built for power readers.

Once Reader officially exits beta sometime in 2023, we intend to reprice Readwise/Reader for new subscribers thereafter. Pricing is really hard and complex so we candidly haven’t figured out the exact plans yet. But regardless, we don’t intend to increase pricing on existing full subscribers at that time. This means that if you subscribe while Reader is in beta, you’ll get lifetime access for $7.99/month (billed annually) as part of our current Readwise Full plan.

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It isn’t cheap, though for what it is, it’s not unreasonable.

If you’re a student or faculty member, there’s a 50% discount — I’m paying $4.49/month for the full plan.

Honestly, though, if I ever left academia and had to pay full price, I’d think it worth the money and would jettison some other subscription before I’d give up Readwise. The ability to add chapters to highlights and notes is incredibly useful. It makes it really easy to see notes in context and to get a good overview of a book’s structure.

Readwise can do the same for PDFs added to the library. Add in Reader’s ability to do the same for RSS feeds, web pages, and YouTube videos, and it’s a fantastic way to extract information from sources and keep track of it.

The ability to sync with tools like Obsidian and Notion is a bonus.

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Hey thanks for sharing your thoughts. I think I’ll try it during the free trial, and seeing how it fits in my workflow. I have several epubs that I have to read, feeds to add and also newsletters. Although I’m not in academia, so I’ll have to pay the full price.

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Came here to mention the Readwise Reader app. Seems perfect for OP’s use case.

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Thanks! I guess I’ll buy a year of the subscription when the trial ends and see after that how it really fit in my workflow.

I remember seeing one post here on the forum where another user did that, bought one year and after that decided if it was a good idea to keep the product.

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I think you can subscribe, and then once it’s paid, you can go into the iOS settings and tell it not to renew. Then you have to take action to keep the subscription, instead of having to remember to cancel. (But you should be able to keep access through the end of the original sub.)

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Yes, thank you. I will try that!

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I have been using readwise and readwise reader since December. It even has a plug-in for obsidian. It does exactly what you’re taking about. It’s been well worth the money for me and i’ve been cutting back on subscriptions.

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I hope they develop a plug-in for Bear :slight_smile: . Thanks for your suggestion.

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It’s funny, but my solution to this was to move away from email subscriptions entirely.

Instead, search for/grab their blog’s RSS feed and add it to a reader app (I use NetNewsWire).

This way my email remains untouched by these sorts of emails, and I can go to that app any time and it just updates with latest articles. It has Mac and iOS/iPadOS client apps so can have it on all my devices, and I sync using Feedly so when I’ve read it on one device the others update too. (Though I think more recently he added iCloud syncing to make it easier).

Just a thought.

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