Hi everyone, lots of people here use and love Goodlinks including @ismh86. What’s so special about this app. At a quick glance, it looks something similar to Pocket or Reeder (it has a Read Later feature). I’m sure I’m missing something here. Can y’all enlighten me please
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You’ll quickly find this Forum is never happy with only one app or one way to do things when there might be six other apps that we could try out and recommend to each other.
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I like Goodlinks because it is simpler than Pocket, Reeder, or Instapaper. It doesn’t have a social network attached to it, there’s no subscription, it doesn’t have a full-blown RSS reader attached to it. You just save links for later reading (or viewing), with the option to change the title and description and add tags. It also does a very nice job of saving your place in an article when you leave and then come back.
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Goodlinks syncs via iCloud, which means you don’t need to create an account with a web-based service. It’s not a subscription service, it doesn’t track you, and it doesn’t serve ads. I’ve migrated from Pocket (the free version) to Goodlinks and so far haven’t found anything about the former that I miss.
Reeder (v5) now also syncs via iCloud and it’s not a subscription service either. It’s more expensive than Goodlinks, but for the price you get both an rss feed reader and a read-it-later service.
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As I get older, like Merlin said in Back to Work, I don’t have the bandwidth to hop around a thousand apps trying to pin down what works.
It can be a fun rat race but eventually it becomes a hamster wheel you’re loathe to get off of.
That seems to be a lot of what we have to offer here on the Forum. I wish you well and hope you find what you are looking for.
I think the solution for someone without bandwidth is to step back from trying to save articles rather than optimize that workflow, unless heavy reading is part of their job, as it obviously is for someone working in media like Stephen does.
It’s easy to skip the threads where people with bandwidth are making decisions, too.
For me, it’s the clean UI in an app, not a website. And it’s extensions are great.
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I just looked at Goodlinks in the App Store and they have raised their price to $10.
Does any one know if there is a trail version? I hate to spend $10 to find out that this app will or will not work for me. FYI, I am using Drafts, Craft, Notes, Sidenotes, and others.
There’s no trial for one-off purchases as the App Store does not allow that so I’m afraid you will have to risk it if you want to test it out. It remains a clean, well thought-out bookmark manager and read-it-later app that looks and works native on all platforms. It should fit well in your workflow given the apps that you use as it can export saved articles in plain text, HTML, Markdown, or create deeplinks.
There’s now also an optional subscription to GoodLinks which lets you use some of the advanced features like highlighting (you get to keep the features rolled out during your subscription if you cancel).
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You can request a refund here Request a refund for apps or content that you bought from Apple - Apple Support.
Based on the amount of subscriptions you are already paying for (drafts, craft…), $10 as a one-time payment for a quality app is pennies 
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At the Apple App Store, Goodlinks costs $10, and there’s an ‘Annual Feature Upgrade’ for $5 as an in-app purchase. I’m curious about how this works. Will the upgrade be released at random times, or will I need to purchase it after a year?
The upgrade gives to access to new features:
You buy the subscription/upgrade if and when you want it (at this point it’s only worth it if you need highlighting). You get to keep all the upgrades and features released while you had the active subscription, should you cancel it at some point, so you lose nothing you paid for. The incentive for the developer is that they keep releasing new premium features so users extend their subscriptions.
I use Goodlinks like a reference database for URLs
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Thanks! Also, thank you WayneG for the link. It makes sense that a developer would want a pricing model like this one to keep money coming in to fund further development.
What amazes me is that you can still buy apps for which you pay once and then use them for years while they are being constantly updated. No monthly or annual fees. For example, I bought DEVONthink Personal 1.x in December of 2006. Years later, I paid a pitifully small amount to upgrade to Version 3 and am still using it.
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I bought it to support the dev. Got much value out of it over the years for my hand full of €.
Nevertheless, you are absolutely correct. I think the dev had an extremely fair business model.
I used to use the app to have my data on iCloud not elsewhere.
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Yes, EagleFiler and ChronoSync are two that I’ve been using for 10+ years. It seems like most buy once programs like these date back to a time before Apple’s app stores caused a pricing “race to the bottom”.
Just bought Goodlinks and have tested it on a couple of articles. Looks to be a wonderful app and just what I need. Thanks, everybody, for the recommendation.
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I don’t get it, and I’m not being snarky.
GoodLinks is a beautiful app, but why purchase an app when Safari has both a read-it-later feature and a good bookmarking feature? I realize the features in Safari may not be as powerful as those in GoodLinks, for example, by paying for the premium ability to extract annotations and highlights (I do this with DEVONthink), but given what Safari offers for free, are the features in GoodLinks that much superior to the basic ones in Safari?