I export stories as PDFs and save them online. Then frequently thin the collection by searching for keywords.
I moved to Goodlinks from Pocket a couple of years ago (at least) and it as interchangeable for me, very few bumps in transition.
A fundamental rule of read-it-later services is that their content entirely comprises articles you have decided not to read and video you have decided not to watch.
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To get the most out of Read-it-later apps, you need to commit to reading those articles. That may mean setting aside time to do so or doing it during downtime between other activities instead of doomscrolling on social media.
I effectively curate my own digital newspaper from many different sources including RSS feeds and then read them on a Sunday or at other opportune times.
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What? Read them?
Case in point: I just spent an inordinate amount of time over the past two weeks creating an Alfred workflow for GoodLinks, and meanwhile, the number of saved articles I read is exactly zero.
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If my read it later builds up too much I just delete the oldest articles. Clearly they weren’t that important to me. It’s not that difficult.
If there’s something I want to save long term, I’m more inclined to save it as a PDF.
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I’m a GoodLinks user, and another terrible non-reader of what I save.
But… despite the “good integration” it has one significant drawback. See the PS in this Mastodon post.
I’m a (very) longtime Tweetbot/Ivory (and, soon, Phoenix) user and it is the source of a lot of stuff I want to save for later.
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Yeah, that’s true. You’re limited to whatever combination of Shortcuts, AppleScript, url-scheme, and/or share sheet, but no REST API. The Shortcuts support though is pretty robust.
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So I approach this a little different. I try to keep my app stack as lean as possible so as I use Things, I simply have a tag called “To Read” (I also have “To Watch” and “To Buy”). So using things quick entry/helper it grabs a URL and I tag it with “To Read”. Anytime I have downtime or want to read, I simply bring up that tag in things and select something to read. It opens in my default browser and I use its reading mode typically. Since DevonThink is part of my app stack I have thought out clipping bookmarks to a read later database but haven’t yet explored that much.
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Is anyone using DevonThink for read-it-later purposes?
I do.
20 characters ….
I’d like to hear about your workflow for that, if you have time. I’ve tried DT for RIL but it has seemed like it requires too many clicks. And the formatting isn’t great on the iPhone.
But if you’ve successfully used DT for RIL I’d like to hear about that
Let me begin by stating the obvious: DEVONthink is not a beautiful app for reading. It’s purely utilitarian. That said, I’ve concluded that I don’t want my reading material scattered across multiple locations. I want everything—except books, which I read in the Kindle app—in one place. Since I already store all my research articles in DEVONthink, I’ve decided to keep all my read-it-later articles there as well.
My process is simple. Whenever I come across an article I want to read but don’t have time for, I send it to DEVONthink. Then, when time allows, I read it using the mobile app—either on my iPhone or iPad. If I’m only reading, the iPhone suffices. If I plan to annotate, I use the iPad with the Apple Pencil. That setup works well for my needs. DEVONthink also allows me to extract annotations, which I find especially helpful.
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I use Matter because I find it more visually appealing than Readwise Reader. The subscription price is lower too, but the service is somewhat buggy. The text-to-speech feature only works in English. Despite all these drawbacks, it meets my needs for the most part. There’s a free plan, but I’m not sure how much it offers.
For a completely free option, maybe using the web clipper of apps like Bear, Obsidian, or Notion would work.
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I was quite surprised to see that Instapaper still existed, and ended up just going back to that after years away as so many of the new “cool” services are just too much and kind of expensive for a read it later service. I use Raindrop over Goodlinks as my Wife uses Android and wish they would have offline reading, then I wouldn’t need anything else. Also I like using ReadKit, so I wanted services it supported.
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I thought I’d revive this thread and see how everyone is getting on?
I stopped using Pocket when I got into the Readwise Reader beta, so while I am sad about its demise I wasn’t personally affected. However, I was reading this thread because I recently moved to GoodLinks. I realised at this point I basically pay Readwise $10/month or whatever it is to save articles I never get round to reading.
Love @MitchWagner’s comment, it’s SO TRUE
I decided to switch to GoodLinks, which I’d bought earlier in the year in a similar frenzy of “I should probably clean up these 3000+ read-it-later items that I never look at”. $10/year to save things I never look at it far easier on my budget 
One bit of mental friction for me is that I liked how Readwise did daily highlight emails, and how I could have an automated export of my highlights. But guess what? I broke my streak on reading daily highlights months and months ago, don’t even get the daily email any more, and since I read maybe one saved article a month when I feel guilty, I don’t have any highlights to keep in sync with my PKM!
GoodLinks can export highlights and does a good-looking job of it, so going forwards it makes more sense to do this manually when I actually read something with highlights I want to save.
All of this nonsense has made me realise: the actual core value to me of a reading app is the quick ability to pull out the bits I like in an article into a note. That’s it. My main interaction with Reader was saving an article I’d just read in-browser in order to highlight the bit I liked. I have tab groups of things I want to read in Safari (not saved in any RIL app 
), a list in Reminders, another list in Notes (I have a shortcut that appends to a never-ending note of URLs), and specific URLs saved in my task manager. All I really need is the layer over the top for extracting highlights. GoodLinks can do that.
My Readwise account doesn’t renew until October and I’m only a couple of weeks into my transition so we’ll see how I get on (plus I need to decide what to do about the 3000+ unread items already in there). One thing I will miss with Reader is its ability to parse YouTube videos. I don’t watch much YouTube, but occasionally a good video was worth adding to Reader in order to get a written copy of the audio. It was useful.
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I’ve been using Readwise Reader for a couple of years, and while I do often reread articles saved there, I find the service to be far too expensive for the use I put to it, My annual subscription expires in three weeks, and I’ve decided not to renew.
For a couple of weeks, I’ve been using Instapaper. $6/mo. I like it — but do I like it enough to pay $6/mo.? Maybe not.
I’m already using Inoreader as an RSS reader, and I’m going to try using it for RIL a bit and see how I like it. I have tried this before in the past and did not like it, but maybe this time my expectations will be more reasonable and it will stick.
If that doesn’t work, I’ll switch to GoodLinks. I’ve tried that before; it’s nice.
Instapaper says it’s integrating with Kobo. I have a Kobo ebook reader and if that integration comes to fruition, I’ll probably switch back to Instapaper.
I’m trying to hit my RIL app during downtime, rather than scrolling social media.
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My thoughts are in the same ballpark. I just want to
- Read what is important to get read (whether for leisure/business, slow/fast, notes/highlights or no)
- Distinguish between items for reading and items for the personal search engine
- Take time away from ‘scrolling’ and not time away from books etc.
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Just heard that Instapaper will be replacing Pocket support on the Kobo.
I use GoodLinks…got tired of Readwise not being interested in a fully functional iPad app.
My current setup is NetNewsWire as my RSS reader and GoodLinks to read the ones I’m interested in that will take longer than a few minutes to get through. If I see it building up too much cruft, I just go delete old articles (because clearly they weren’t important enough to read).