I was an early adopter of Read It Later, which later became Pocket, and I was pretty disappointed when Pocket shut down earlier this year.
I have been meaning to settle on a new read-it-later app, but for the last few months I have just been tossing links into a Safari and Chrome bookmark folder called “Stash.”
What I always appreciated about Pocket was the speed. The Safari extension saved instantly, and the Alfred workflow made it even faster to send links to the inbox.
Lately I have been trying Raindrop.io. It is a great and very polished bookmarking app, but it does not feel like a real Pocket replacement. The macOS app is excellent, but adding something to Unsorted often takes a moment or a few extra clicks, and it is not always clear that the link actually went in. The Alfred workflow also feels a little clunky to me.
I still have a reason to keep Raindrop around, but I would like something faster and more lightweight for read-it-later. I keep seeing GoodLinks recommended, but when I tried it a few years ago it did not work for me, although that might have been because I was so used to Pocket.
I am curious what others here are using now that Pocket is gone, especially options with a quick Safari extension and a smooth Alfred workflow.
I am using Goodlinks and paid for it in 2022. It has gone into a hybrid model and I haven’t unlocked highlighting and article sync over iCloud. I do plan to pay for it soon and itsnone if my used apps. I read RSS and send the read later to goodlinks.
I also paid for Couch Read later but I don’t use it yet.
I use Goodlinks and like it, a lot. It does just enough to be useful.
I’ve also ended up with a free account of instapaper, which syncs to my Kobo e-reader, so things I really will read later go in there and links I want to keep and do something with (e.g. make notes in Craft or read only a selected part) go into Goodlinks. Goodlinks is a good citizen in the Apple ecosystem, so it knows about the share sheet and that made it easy to write a “Goodlinks → Craft” shortcut.
I made my workflow simple. Using Things (task manager) for read later as well in addition to other stuff. Created a separate list and whenever I see something that needs to be read later, I just share it with Things. Has great shortcut support as well. 99% of the articles I read are one-time read either way, no point saving the content. The rest 1% is deep reading and might be read a few times so I save them to obsidian after reading/taking notes
You could try Zoho notebooks, they have an very adequate free version, but there is also a paid version which I thinks gives some extra space and functionality. It was the closest to Pocket I could find, although I find myself using Goodlinks now.
I got in on Readwise early so I get the grandfathered price which is like $60 a year. I’ve moved more to physical books so the highlighting hasn’t really been something I use a lot, but enough to justify a decent cost per year while still being able to easily save web articles. I like it enough.
Over the last year I have gone back and forth from Readwise Reader to GoodLinks and back to Readwise Reader. I was hoping to get out of the Readwise subscription, but I am now using it as both an RSS Reader and a Read-It-Later app. I downloaded GoodLinks again because they released a 3.0 last week, but I a going to stick with Reader for now, as it is feature-rich and with the improvements they have made to their RSS Feed section it has been worth the cost for me.
Folio (https://app.savewithfolio.com) is the closest I have found to the Pocket app
I still miss the days when it was called Read-it-later. Such a nice piece of software it was!
I’ve settled pretty well into GoodLinks (standard articles) and OmniFocus (forum threads, cool interactive reports etc.) I don’t set any metadata on my saves. I have a few perspectives in OF on my iPad based on the URLs, e.g. all links from certain forums grouped together based on matching “talk.macpowerusers” etc.
I also like epic poems. One enjoyable thing I’ve been doing is keeping one in progress in GoodLinks. I read as little as I’m in the mood for, out loud, sometimes!
With the latest update, Goodlinks has changed the quick save dialog from a small square to a full-screen display.
Previously, when I tapped the Goodlinks share button, the dialog would appear, and I could tap anywhere on the screen to return to my previous task. Now, I have to wait for the dialog to close, which I find frustrating. Doing this several times a day adds up to wasted time.
Here is an think outside the box answer which has really been useful to me lately:
There are lots of Notion web clippers available with all sorts of features.
Most notably - once the bookmarks or clips are in Notion, its AI features are terrific both to create a database(s) from the data and to perform a semantic search to retrieve the contents.
I have tried almost every read-it-later app that exists - none are nearly as good as notion in either ability to customize the metadata or search/retrieve my items by whatever natural language criteria I want.
I was completely fed up by all the downsides of common bookmark managers / read-it-later apps.
I tried Raindrop.io but I don’t feel save using it. I’m nor Russophobic or anything but the dev was / is / lived in Russia and is reacting strangely to questions about data encryption. This combination made me feel unease. I’m not a privacy evangelist but you can do a lot with bookmark data.
I tried Anybox which felt great but with more and more bookmarks it got really slow and iCloud syncing didn’t work sometimes which was annoying.
I tried Goodlinks but I didn’t use it as often as I wished. I just didn’t like it.
Then I went down the rabbit hole of self-hosting and Oh-boy, this is a whole different world with so many options.
I can recommend:
Linkding - for simple storing links. It is so fast and looks so minimal. I loved it.
Karakeep - It is similar to Raindrop with a really nice UI.
All of them are free if you want to self-host with an old computer. If you don’t feel comfortable doing that you can use services like Pikapods which just host it for you and are very easy to set up.
I’m using Pikapods at the moment. It’s very cheap. Like 2€ per month to host 2 apps.
I use Keyboard Maestro Conflict Pallette, so when I hit opt+T, I get a palette of all my things areas and then use the Things URL Template to prefill out most of the quick entry panel like area / project tags, etc. So.I just added a “ Read” Area and I’ll try that for read it later.
Read” Area and I’ll try that for read it later.