I have accumulated hundreds of articles in Reeder 5’s Read It Later Service on my iPad. I would like to batch export all of them so that I can move them to another service or add them to DevonThink.
I can’t seem to find a way to do this on the iPad. Note, I can’t run Reeder 5 on my Mac, as I’m stuck running on Mojave. I’m using FeedBin as my RSS service.
Thanks for any thoughts on how I can do this!
AFAIK this isn’t possible, even in the Mac version. In fact, you still have to delete articles from Read It Later one at a time. I gave up on Reeder when v5 still lacked these basic features.
I would be happy to learn I am wrong about this.
I don’t have my iPad handy but on iPhone, in Read Later, long press Reading List > Account Settings > Export All Links. You’ll get a JSON file with the URLs which should be portable enough with a little shaping.
Awesome, thanks! Um, now the problem is what on earth do I do with that file? Can other Read it Later services import that, such as Pocket, Instapaper, Raindrop.io, other? I have no idea what to do with it!
It doesn’t look like it’s a format anyone accepts. That whole world isn’t exactly on one standard to begin with, though there are some leaders. That said, with a little bit of shaping you can turn this into a format that will work. What service do you want to bring the links into?
If you wanted to add your articles to DevonThink, you may be able to run a Shortcut for this… Something like:
If you wanted to port to Pocket etc, that might be even easier— shouldn’t be too hard to extract the url from each item, then pass that over to your chosen service.
I tested this exporting 10 RTF files (which were named as HTML files, but hey…). Took a few seconds. For a few hundred items… shouldn’t take too long. Not sure if Shortcuts has a timeout limit for things like this.
Note: I did this with iOS14.8. It should work in iOS15 as well, but I can’t speak to any of the bugs present there, so YMMV.
If you are willing to try using a two line command in Python (which is already on your Mac and used extensively by macOS), I’ll give you the instructions. It really is simple. will result in a CSV file that you can open in Numbers, Excel, or a text editor.
Nothing bad will happen. Simple.
Awesome, thanks guys! I’m thinking of exporting to DevonThink (on Mac) or perhaps a new Read it Later service such as Raindrop.io or Instapaper/Pocket.
rms: thanks, I’d be up for running a Python script. I have Python 2.7.16 installed on my mac and would be willing to give it a go. I’m not sure if Devonthink or others could import a csv file though.
This method of converting JSON to CSV uses Python and a function from the Pandas library. Surely other methods possible. While Python is by default installed on macOS, you may need to add the Pandas library. I’m using Python3 and I can only assume this will work with your version of Python. [Note: I use Anaconda for all my Python activities, and they deliver Pandas et. al. as part of that application]
The instructions below are all done in a macOS “terminal”.
The best way to add a library to Python is to use “pip”. See Reference 2 for how to download and install pip if pip not installed.
Then use pip to install pandas:
pip install Pandas
which will download and install Pandas for you.
Then, in the directory where your JSON file is saved (probably your home directory) launch Python by typing “python” on the command line. Inside of the Python session, type these two commands:
import pandas as pd
pd.read_json("yourfile.json").to_csv("output.csv")
The first line loads the Pandas package, and the second line calls the Pandas function that converts an input JSON file to an output CSV file.
You can then view the CSV file in Numbers or Excel and then do what you want. Or carry on with more Python code to munge the data as you see fit.
To download each URL and import into DEVONthink, my strong hunch is that one can write an AppleScript script that reads the CSV and then instructs DEVONthink to download and import each web url. This is not something I’ve ever tackled but if I had to handle a long list of URLs, I would do it that way. I’ll leave that to you. Apple provides documentation on AppleScript, and the DEVONthink Handbook provides guidance on this. Might be something on DEVON Technologies Automation forum already written. They provide a script call “Import Instapaper CSV” which you might be able to bend to your will with this CSV file.
Enjoy.
Caveat Emptor.
References
Thanks rms so much for taking the time to provide this detailed instruction. Much appreciated. Unfortunately I’m a bit gun shy going for the pandas install as this is my main work machine and I really don’t want to mess anything up with a pandas install. And as you point out, this only gets me half way. Let me noodle on this a bit and if I find a solution to go direct from JSON to Devonthink I will post back here.
Thank you again though for your help. I feel I’m getting a bit out of my comfort zone here…
you are right to be cautious. maybe google around and try to discover the risks associated with installing pandas (used extensively by many).