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segphault
I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for readability doesn't align with their new direction.
I'd probably be applauding the decision to shut this down if I thought they were doing it to free up resources to increase their focus on the browser, but Mozilla seems to be institutionally committed to chasing its own demise, so I'm sure they will instead focus on AI integration and other stuff that nobody asked for.
Meanwhile, Firefox is still missing proper support for a bunch of modern web features like view transitions and CSS anchor points that are available in every other browser.
bayindirh
I have another theory, actually.
I'm also a very old user, since the first days of the service, and I don't know how many saves I have it inside (will see when my export arrives).
The latest iteration's search was abysmal, and I normally refrain from using strong words. It failed to find exact matches from titles, the words or excerpts I know that exist in the article I'm searching for, and as a result, it became a FIFO basically. Unless you consume the list directly, hitting something you are looking for was nigh impossible.
After being berated by support to use the search "properly", I started to build my own app, a TUI tool to curate the list, but it was going slow. Honestly, I'm a bit relieved now since I'm free from developing that software, and I can dig the data in my own terms.
BTW, my export is just arrived, and it's a series of CSV files which has the usual suspects as columns. I can import this into a SQLite and dive the way I want.
One less thing to worry about, but this doesn't mean I'm not bitter about its demise, too.
Edit: It turns out I have ~37K saves. Whoa.
gxqoz
Yeah I have 32k saves and hit the same problems with search being extremely unreliable. About 5 years ago quotes stopped working in search. Trying to find "The Grapes of Wrath" would return all instances of "of" and "the." You could sort of hack it by searching for the most distinct word (maybe "Grapes") if you already knew exactly what you were searching for. I long suspected there was some architectural change they made on the backend that broke this and they didn't want to admit in support articles. Perhaps the Mozilla legal department determined that having a text copy of all articles in their database was some legal risk and they moved to just having the URL and maybe the title (this would also explain why "permanent copies" disappeared).
Anyway, as the 32k articles indicate, I was a power user of Pocket so part of me is sad it's going away. But they've really been checked out since maybe 2019 with regards to any real support for this product.
chii
> having a text copy of all articles in their database was some legal risk
the risk should've been the same with google's index, and yet they're dandy!
I think it's more easily explained by incompetence. Esp. when stop words like 'of' and 'the' are somehow included in the index. These are almost trivial to remove prior to indexing (any decent indexing library, such as lucene, would have a prepared list of stop words filter, and it's not like you even need to do any work to have it!).
sshine
> suspected there was some architectural change they made on the backend that broke this
I think Mozilla specialises in this. At some point, having many tabs open on the Firefox iOS app would eat all the memory and lag out the phone. This problem even came and went a couple of times over the years.
It’s an unloved child being held captive for the money it earns.
GuestFAUniverse
IMO search is garbage in all Mozilla products.
E.g. Thunderbird ignores potential matches in quoted mail text. That's utterly useless if one remembers a certain mentioning by the other side. Plus, now and then repairing the index suddenly leads to matches -- when is the right time to repair? I don't now -> always if it's seriously important...
alias_neo
Is something like Apache Solr (a search index) well suited for something like this?
I've deployed and used it at work for searching specific, well-specified bits of information, but I don't know how well it would work on large chunks of text like articles etc; I assume this is its real purpose and it should fit, but I'm guessing.
mikemcg0
Agree on search being abysmal - I'm surprised that none of these readings apps realized that the right approach to this space is building an aggregator and solving discovery/search for all writing on the internet.
perch.app is the newest entrant to this space, and it's the closest I've seen to getting this right.
twilo
Best alt other than perch? For whatever reason I can’t get it to show up in the share/send menu on iOS and doesn’t seem to have a browser extension.
How do you send articles to it?
bayindirh
> the right approach to this space is building an aggregator and solving discovery/search for all writing on the internet.
This is not the right solution for me. Pocket was the perfect one, even in the first iteration. I don't want discovery. I want a personal box/shelf which keeps a list of what I want to read and what I have read. Permanent copies was a great add-on while it lasted too. Because I want the version I have seen. Not the edited/updated one.
Perch doesn't work the way I want. In fact, it's the direct opposite of what I need.
lttlrck
What's your other theory? ;-)
undefined
j1elo
+1. That was readbait :) (just joking, it actually was an interesting comment to read)
trinsic2
I used to use Rain.drop, not the same a pocket, but similar. I imported the data into Obsidian and I now use that for information I want to save online using the clipper plugin. It's changed my life. If you like customizing the searchability and displaying content from saved pages, is the best IMHO.
bayindirh
Looks like neat workflow. I use Obsidian too, but not in that way. I don't want a collage of what I have read, I want a database which I can dig, like Pocket.
Looks like my future lies in a self-hosted Wallabag instance.
itair
Rain.drop is Russian, isn't it?
grvdrm
I’m curious: with that many saves, what were you main reasons for using Pocket? Did you glean info at scale or is it just the case that you saved so much, read some subset, and it grew over time?
bayindirh
The initial idea was nice: do not lose what you want to read later (the list), keep a list of what you read (archive). Then it became better with “Permanent copies”: never lose content you want to read again later.
That number is a combination of all three, plus more than a decade of active use.
poopsmithe
What was the theory!!! I had to read your comment twice looking for it, only to realize that there was no theory in there!
ycombinete
I think it was that people stopped using Pocket because the search was so bad.
major505
Mozilla is more occupied this days paying multi milionary bonus to its executives and begging users for money they waste on useless projects.
Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.
whyenot
Their reckoning day is coming when Google stops paying them $500m+ a year to be the default search engine. That payment alone account for 80% of Mozilla's budget, and has made them fat, wasteful, and directionless. It's really upsetting to me personally, I gave a lot (time, code, and money) to Mozilla in the early days when they were really struggling.
tomcam
That makes me very angry. I am fat, wasteful, and directionless but Google pays me nothing.
jonwinstanley
As I understand it, Google pay for the searches passed on by the browser. So as long as they have users, they’ll get paid.
alfiedotwtf
I’ve got job alerts, and it looks like they are going all in on VPN services given how many people they want to hire… yet I don’t know a single person who would use Mozilla’s VPN service let alone pay for it.
BeFlatXIII
I also hope that Google stops paying Apple $20B/yr for the same reason. The effect on the stock market due to a sudden reduction in Apple services revenue will be fun to watch.
Teever
Does anyone know if Mozilla has built up an endowment/trust fund type thing that will allow them to operate without further revenue from an entity like Google?
magicalhippo
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.
As someone who grew up on Netscape Navigator, the current situation gives me flashback to how Netscape had to die so Mozilla could be born...
mbreese
I mean… Phoenix was the original code name for Firefox, so maybe it was just foreshadowing.
thesuitonym
I'm curious what the governance structure of Mozilla is that keeps things this way. People have been upset for quite a while at the direction Mozilla is going in, yet there seems to be no coalition to oust the current leadership. Is this impossible for some reason?
sciurus
The leadership has been ousted.
> This includes major growth in our Boards, with 40% new Board members since we began our efforts to evolve and grow back in 2022. We’ve also been bringing in new executive talent, including a new MoFo Executive Director and a Managing Partner for Mozilla Ventures. By the end of the year, we hope to have new, permanent CEOs for both MoCo and Mozilla.ai... With these changes, Mitchell Baker ends her tenure as Chair and a member of Mozilla Foundation and Mozilla Corporation boards.
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/mozilla-leadership-growt...
wolpoli
There is no way for anyone to get Mozilla to change because the current board picks new board members.
major505
The problem seen to be that they give power to activists instead of engineers. What the fuck they know about improvements to their core product? The only thing they do is create pretty slogans, borrow money from big capital to grown on top of debit, and seek "new sources of income". This is what it made Mozilla turn from a company that does a super badass browser from a company that sells shit advertisements, infringing on users rights, and claims to be a "international conglomeration of activists" or some shit like this.
28304283409234
I switched to Vivaldi after 23 years of Mozilla. Could not be happier.
netsharc
Another Vivaldi user here, who "grew up" with the old pre-Chinese Opera...
Sadly Vivaldi is also dependent on Chromium, and will also have to lose Manifest v2 support when that time comes.
Henchman21
All my hopes are with Ladybird now
lillecarl
My hopes are with Servo, I like the novelty of it being implemented in Rust rather than C/C++.
I follow Ladybird and appreciate their work. Especially implementing everything from standards, fixing standards and keeping it easy to follow the standards in code (and I'm proud Andreas is Swedish too).
But for something with the surface area of "everything you can do with a computer and it's uncle" a memory safe language feels like the right choice.
Just a knee-jerk opinion since I'm not a browser dev and existing sandboxing seems to work well enough, but an opinion nonetheless.
fransje26
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.
The day that happens, the only thing we are left with is Chrome..
Vilian
Mozilla ≠ firefox
binkHN
> Mozilla must die, so Firefox can live.
Ugh. This sounds so horrible, but this is probably the truest statement on this entire page.
0xEF
What's even more wild is that many users, even on HN, don't seem to pick up on the fact that the alternatives to Firefox are either Chrome or Chrome in different colored trenchcoats. Firefox is like the last bastion of user choice when it comes to deciding how we interact with the Internet, a choice that has been subtly but steadily stripped from us for years.
My question to the FOSS community is why Firefox is not used to build more independent browsers the way Chrome is? While I stand fast on the ground that Google wants to monopolize our web experience, it really seems like the community at large is just...letting it happen. The only strong contender that I've seen built from FF is Iceweasel/cat which works fine for my needs, but is definitely not winning any popularity contests despite actively knocking out those non-free parts of FF.
whywhywhywhy
Look into what the Mozilla foundation actually spends its money on and the exec salaries, developer layoffs and then compare that to Firefox development over the past 5 years.
It’s getting harder and harder to find examples of this non-profit structure in tech that actually serve the software they claim to.
doubled112
And Thunderbird?
kbrosnan
It is the MZLA Technologies Corporation a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. Firefox is developed by the Mozilla Corporation a wholly owned part of the Mozilla Foundation.
major505
My guess. is going to be sold to a tech giant, and probably extinct. Maybe Microsoft buy it and rename as outlook for Linux.
alfiedotwtf
Last time I heard, Thunderbird has zero people on it for years but eventually they manage to afford to pay someone part time to work on it :smh:
fkfyshroglk
> A product that's designed to strip ads from content for readability doesn't align with their new direction.
Interesting. I saw it as a glorified bookmarking service and saw the readability concerns as what raised red flags for me: mozilla just inherently isn't interested in competing on value rather than on marketing.
laweijfmvo
they really went out of their way to include as many "Why" sections and links as possible without saying a single word about why.
nimbius
the internet is no longer designed to be readable.
it is designed to be profitable.
Henchman21
Its also no longer designed for users, but for the advertisers and bots.
fkfyshroglk
Yea, but that matters less than you think in this context as what I want (a bookmark service for bookmarks) matters a lot less than how the service is marketed and funded.
Multicomp
They killed off the live bookmarks feature that I still miss in favor of this and it was never the same.
My rss feeds are still around from then. Glad I didn't invest in this fad.
fkfyshroglk
There is still no solid way to persist RSS feeds (...especially the content they actually refer to) to private storage. Any serious archiving service today will need to undertake snapshotting a website as it stands without relying on such sickly, secondary signals.
...but where RSS is reliable, yes, it's amazing.
nine_k
> available in every other browser
Isn't it because almost every "other browser" reuses the Chromium engine? Or is Firefox trailing even mobile Safari here?
alwillis
> Or is Firefox trailing even mobile Safari here?
Short answer: yes.
Here are some web platform features Chrome and Safari (desktop and mobile) are shipping but not Firefox:
* Container Style queries: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...
* @scope: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...
* Picture in Picture: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...
* View Transitions: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...
* Cross-document view transitions: https://web-platform-dx.github.io/web-features-explorer/feat...
nonillion
I'm not a developer, so maybe I misunderstand what PiP is strictly speaking. But, I thought I had been using PiP for a couple of years now in Firefox. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/about-picture-picture-f...
Is this not PiP?
undefined
alwillis
WebKit, which powers Safari on all its platforms has been ahead of Firefox on a number of features.
For example, the WebKit team shipped :has() in March 2022. Chrome shipped in August of that year and Firefox even later: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33646121
binarysneaker
Ever since Microsoft announced Edge was going to use Chromium, I've been wondering why Firefox doesn't do the same. By adopting the same renderer as everyone else, consumers get a consistent rendering experience and Firefox devs can focus on the features that keep us using Firefox.
mvdtnz
How does that change the basic facts from the end users' perspective?
Lutger
It doesn't, but the sentence referred to wasn't really aimed at them. I mean, Mozilla could ditch its engine and adopt chromium in order to really focus on advertising, and then it would also support said features from an end users perspective! Somehow I have a feeling that won't earn Mozilla praise.
For all its flaws, Mozilla is actually the ONLY other company building a browser engine. When its gone, there will basically be only one left.
maigret
For users it’s called “putting all your eggs in one basket”
soulofmischief
I never wanted Pocket, it was forced upon us users initially and slowly made less obtrusive, but the damage was done. When I saw this headline, I cracked a wide smile; maybe there is hope for Firefox after all. I just want a browser that respects my freedom. Not a web platform with a dozen doodads and gizmos and AI review bots and weird partnerships.
netsharc
Ah, Firefox, the overly attached browser: https://bug1791524.bmoattachments.org/attachment.cgi?id=9295...
alabastervlog
A lot of developers and “UX” “experts” really don’t appreciate how extreme these modals are. They disrupt everyone a little bit, and for less-technical users can throw them off entirely.
“Once per year” heh, add it to all the other disruptive shit they pop up and out on launch basically at random and they’re training users to dread launching the program. “Will it slap me in the face this time? If so, how hard?” Most modern programs have a problem with this, but FF is bad about it. And it’s just a fucking browser! Why? Why do this crap?
90s_dev
Firefox introducing tabs instantly made it more usable than IE. Then Chrome came out, and was always two steps ahead of Firefox. A month ago or so I added Firefox support for 90s.dev but for some reason they still don't support ES modules in service workers, which was a pain to work around (see https://github.com/sdegutis/os.90s.dev/blob/main/main.ts#L12... and https://github.com/sdegutis/os.90s.dev/blob/main/site/sw.ts#... )
bwat49
I think firefox is going to end up like Opera
lack of investment in gecko and dropping marketshare of firefox will result in more and more compatibility issues over time (which further accelerates dropping marketshare), until they're eventually forced to become another chromium based browser
paradox460
A few years ago it was Safari that was the new IE, the one browser you had to go out of your way to support all its dumb little quirks. Firefox and Chrome+friends more or less "just worked"
Now Firefox is moving into that role. Except Firefox has no killer captive audience. Safari was pushed because of iOS Mobile users. Firefox doesn't have that.
So when you're a frontend dev at big corp, and you have to get stuff done now, targeting the quirks of a browser used by less than a tenthbof a percent of your userbase doesn't factor into the equation
politelemon
IE was not really about quirks, it was about it abusing its dominant position to do whatever it wanted, the quirks were a symptom. Safari is still the new IE. But yes to the rest, Firefox's lack of dominance will get worse if it fails to keep up.
wodenokoto
> When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company
While strictly speaking it is not “always”, Mozilla has, in the colloquial sense, always been an internet advertising company. But they have mostly outsourced the advertising to Google.
podgietaru
I loved Pocket. I used it nearly daily. I was often in their top n% of users. I paid for it. Then one day they changed the way their rendering worked on iOS. And it destroyed my workflow.
I also bought a Kobo E-Reader specifically to use Pocket with it. In short order I found an open-source alternative - Omnivore - and spent my time hacking away at my Kobo to get it to pull from there instead. https://github.com/Podginator/KoboOmnivoreConverter
I think Pocket was amazing. I think the idea worked amazingly for someone like me, who is an enjoyer of reading, but had a hard time finding a moment to sit down and do it.
I am upset that Pocket is going. I am upset that Omnivore shut down. I am upset that my Kobo will probably remove that integration and thus ruin my Self-Hosted Omnivore's integration with it.
I think it could have been a lot, lot more.
gorbachev
I bought an Amazon Fire tablet exclusively for Pocket use as well.
Something did change maybe about year and a half ago about rendering articles. It felt like less and less of them were rendering in article mode, and I needed wifi access to read articles in the original format. Before that practically everything rendered in article mode, afterwards I would say it was about 50%.
itake
yeahs, the offline caching got terrible. its text that (rarely) changes. I have no idea why the mobile app couldn't just remember what each url was, even if it was 6 weeks stale.
Also, Pocket couldn't create reader views for many websites (like hacker news discussions), which means the TTS was useless.
Oh and the TTS required an internet connection.
kimberli
That's so unfortunate--I've also used Pocket for a decade+. I had the Omnivore app installed on my phone as a replacement for the other infinite feed scrolling apps.
I'm actually working on an open-source alternative at https://curi.ooo if you're interested in checking it out. It's a work in progress, but I'm building it primarily for my own use because I'm frustrated with all these services shutting down.
The Kobo integration you have is interesting too, wonder how I could support that use case...
patch_collector
I love how clean it is!
One personal use case that I'd love to see supported (when you get your mobile apps implemented) is the ability to add articles via the 'share' shortcuts. I get mailing lists with links, and I don't want to stop to read an article while clearing out my inbox. So if a link looks interesting, I use the 'share' feature to add it to Pocket, and then I'll go back to it later -- without opening my browser.
kimberli
Yes, great suggestion. It's currently implemented in the beta Android app, just need to get registered with the Apple Developer Program and get iOS working.
Because Curio saves client-side, it opens the app and renders the page briefly though. Not sure yet if there's a better way to do it.
pm3003
That's great! I've been looking for something for a while. Great features from my point of view:
- email newsletters, especially with offline mails (no remote images) since theya can go easily through workplace gateyways for those of us who work in secure areas. Didn't see yet if yours were.
- sync and integrate with everything, e-readers, nextcloud, browsers...
- PWA
Good luck!
otherme123
I'm in a similar spot: whenever I browse an article that could be better suited for the Kobo (i.e. admiral cloudberg), I send it to pocket. Right now I don't know how to replace it, because AFAIK Kobo don't allow to install anything similar.
Cherub0774
As someone who self-hosts and who used the Pocket+Kobo integration _and_ who hacks away at their Kobo, hopefully folks like you and I can help keep the integration alive.
I already try to prevent the Kobo from upgrading due to unwanted changes to my Kobo patch configuration, so I'm crossing my fingers here.
fifteen1506
Check the barebones but functional Wallabag. Hosted version available for a fee.
benjaminoakes
Related bit from my other comment:
> If you don't want to bother with self-hosting, there are some hosted options available: https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag/wiki/wallabag-ecosystem...
cloudfudge
Wallabag looks great, if a little homebrew. I signed up and had to laugh that the default "Welcome to wallabag" article could not be retrieved. Regardless, I decided to give 'em 12 bucks and see how it goes.
puzzlingcaptcha
Just to add that you can also self-host it, and it supports Kobo as well. I once stumbled upon but didn't investigate further since Pocket just worked so well. I guess now I will have to.
SSLy
It’s the lack of nice sync to an articles directory that’ll be missed. I’m also bitten by this shutdown.
el_benhameen
This was one of my considerations when I chose Kobo over Kindle. Very unfortunate, indeed.
marklar423
I'm with you, I use Pocket all the time on my Kobo as well - I need to cobble together some self-hosted alternative. Did you find another alternative besides Omnivore?
podgietaru
I still use the self-hosted version of Omnivore - I had built quite a lot around it so when that shut down I just decided to transfer over.
It was hard enough going from Pocket to something else, I didn't want to do that again.
I actually have a Supernote now, and side-loaded the Omnivore App onto it - so I use my Kobo less (though still somewhat at night due to the backlight.)
wellthisisgreat
Yay another Supernote fan! Love that device.
_def
> Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does not contain tags or highlights.
boo! without the tags, the links will be mostly useless for me. Every now and then I thought aboyt switching to some self-hosted solution. Should've done it sooner... and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.
tristanho
You can connect Pocket to Readwise Reader ( readwise.io/reader ), via Pocket's API, which will let Reader view all the tags, metadata, highlights, etc.
Even if you didn't want to use Reader, you could then export from inside Reader and Readwise to pull out CSVs of all of your articles+highlights -- no subscription required.
(full disclosure: founder of Readwise here, obviously if you want to try our Reader app that would be sweet, but at least wanted to offer this way to get a more complete export)
uxcolumbo
So your app will also import the archived copies from Pocket? It's mainly about importing archived content from links that might now be dead.
tristanho
No, unfortunately their API doesn't return the actual html content of the saved articles :( just the urls and all the metadata: highlights, title, author, image, tags, location, etc
I really wish they did :/ some things aren't even on the internet archive and are probably saved uniquely on Pocket's servers. Would be sweet if they could open source that data.
no_wizard
something these other apps could do is run dead URLs through archive.org and nab it that way.
Not 100% foolproof but I'm willing to bet it will work for the majority of links
oa335
Love your app. Any plans to enable reading of Readwise Reader articles on eReaders like Kobo? I’m thinking of something akin to how Pocket’s integration with Kobo.
tristanho
Thanks! Kobo is hard because it's proprietary software, but we would like to...
However, there is a wide range of eink devices that already exist that run Android (check out Boox, Meebook, Daylight, though there are many others) -- we've optimized Reader to run great on these devices :)
joshjob42
It would be really amazing if you could attempt for those who've connected Pocket to pull the data of all those saved files etc into Reader. I realize it wouldn't necessarily work as some stuff is just gone, but it would be a nice feature for those of us moving over.
TiredOfLife
Thanks. Will try. Currently Pocket seems to be overloaded, but hopefully it recovers in the 30 trial days.
While your app seems nice on first glance the 10$ a month is not a small amount for non americans. 10$ a year I could stomach.
tristanho
Cool! The import should auto-retry, but in case something gets snagged there you can also always do `cmd+k -> pocket` to retrigger a full import.
Totally hear you on price.. Reader is built for people who spend a lot of time reading and can justify it (and the sub also comes with access to our Readwise product too).
We also have a 50% off discount for students as well folks in countries with depressed currencies (eg India, South American countries, etc) which might help.
We try our best, but are also bootstrapped and have to charge enough to keep the company sustainable!
deepthaw
seems to work better with https://fabiensanglard.net/rss.xml than most readers although it still gets 403s fetching images but I'll still give it a run to see how it works for me.
tristanho
I think the image urls provided in the RSS feed are just broken, eg this one is linked in the latest article:
sdk16420
Not to mention they charged $45 a year for a service that included backups in their cloud should your save become a dead link. Imagine paying that amount for several years and when you need it they pull the rug.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250321050043/https://getpocket...
ternaryoperator
On that archived page: "A forever home for your collection"
Forever just doesn't mean what it used to.
rollcat
SaaS rots faster than the bits on your spinning rust. The incentive structure tends to drift away from a corp's long-term strategy. If you don't own it, you don't own it.
Even the bits you own rot faster than brick and mortar. It's just the nature of the universe - cosmic rays, magnetosphere, etc. Doesn't help that the integrated circuits are smaller, and hence much more brittle with each generation.
And do you even own the hardware you purchased? Even before the ongoing craze to turn fridges into subscriptions into landfill. Try some "retro" devices from 15, 20, 30y ago - many builtin websites/apps/services just 404, long before companies planned for obsolescence.
Only diamonds are forever.
daemin
Like when people assume a "lifetime guarantee" is for the lifetime of themselves. More correctly it means for the lifetime of the company or the product support cycle.
pouulet
The tags are exported : https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/exporting-your-pocket-l...
What is contained in the export file?
Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does contain tags or highlights.
thrdbndndn
The page was "Last updated: 24 minutes ago". Someone at Mozilla saw this HN post and modified it (unsure if the export feature itself was changed or not).
You can tell it's a rushed edit as "Your export file will include links (URLs) of your saved items. The export does not extract the text of saved links. Additionally, the export does contain tags or highlights." reads very unnatural.
Via Wayback Machine, it can be easily verified that the old versions of it, both the one edited very recently or the old ones in 2024, said "does not contain tags or highlights".
https://web.archive.org/web/20250415002842/https://support.m...
https://web.archive.org/web/20250522175656/https://support.m...
tbr11
My export from March had tags, my guess is this docs page just got missed when they updated the export months ago
Vinnl
Yep sorry, I saw this post, brought it up internally because I remember hearing they updated the export functionality in preparation of the shutdown, and then they fixed it while I was out. So here's your notification that the docs were updated :)
Edit: and I see now other folks noticed and shared it as well.
throwaway314155
Doesn't have to be a conspiracy. They saw a comment about a mistake in the article and made a clumsy edit in an attempt to remedy the mistake.
JeremyNT
Yeah this is really lame. I used it because I like Mozilla and thought Pocket's future would be relatively safe in their hands.
I'm sure a lot of HN readers view any of Mozilla's operations outside of Firefox as a distraction, but I think it's a shame to lose Pocket. I really like several Mozilla services (Relay, VPN, and up to now Pocket) and this shutdown along with such a half-assed export option is a real disappointment.
OddMerlin
I'm with you. I think it's great that Mozilla is trying/tried to extend their value beyond just the browser.
I found pocket immensely useful. Having the ability to have my kobo e-reader sync pocket articles to read off-line was such a useful feature.
I don't understand the Mozilla hate on this board. I think it's wildly overblown.
kyleee
You’re misunderstanding; much of the so called hate is rather intense disappointment many tech people have with Mozilla due to mismanagement and constant fumbles. Intense disappointment about a future we’ll never get to experience where Mozilla is well run and produces and iterates effectively on big open source projects, bolsters browser ecosystem competition and fends off browser monopoly (requires market share which they’ve failed at), etc. Don’t conflate that with hate, many of us are still their biggest proponents despite often engaging in criticism. If you stop seeing a lot of Mozilla “hate” that would probably be worse and then you’d really know that nobody cares about them at all and they’re actually a dead organization at that point.
hyperhopper
> I like Mozilla and thought Pocket's future would be relatively safe in their hands.
Never trust a company like this. You'll always get burned. If it's not FOSS, its not reliable and will likely burn you
thayne
Mozilla's track record of shutting down projects is almost as bad as Google's. I wouldn't count on any of their non-Firefox projects lasting very long.
bossyTeacher
> I'm sure a lot of HN readers view any of Mozilla's operations outside of Firefox as a distraction
For most people, Mozilla is just the company developing Firefox and Firefox is the Mozilla product. Mozilla's pivot into the web's hero is coming at the price of Firefox and people are not happy. Their current situation where they depend financially on Google just doesn't feel right. And I understand that Google has been asked to stop financing Mozilla. Tough times will be coming for them
sanjayts
I migrated to raindrop.io[1] few months back and IIRC the file downloaded from Pocket did have tags. I again tried following the same steps and the CSV does have tags so I'm not sure why they save the export will not have tags?
FeistySkink
Not sure what they mean by tags, but my export seems to have all my tags.
randomor
I just did an export while trying to create an importer to my app DoubleMemory. Pocket actually does export tags. It’s probably a miscommunication.
Here is what the raw csv look like if you check my tool example: https://doublememory.com/posts/tools/pocket/
The text that’s separated by pipe are the tags.
chimeracoder
> and I will never trust Mozilla with any service again.
Who will you trust? Google? Apple? Microsoft? It's not like any of the other behemoths have a better track record when it comes to long-term maintenance and availability of hosted consumer products. If anything, Mozilla actually has the best track record out of them all when it comes to long-term offerings.
walterbell
> Who will you trust?
Your-self-hosted?
reaperducer
Your-self-hosted?
Only if you're among the .0001% of people who can code it yourself. Otherwise, nothing is different; you're always relying on someone else for their software, feature, security, and compatibility updates.
xnx
> Who will you trust? Google?
Google has very good/complete Takeout data for most of its services.
ummonk
What hosted products has Apple dropped? iCloud might stop supporting old devices but that doesn’t stop you from keeping the data on device or accessing via a new device.
chimeracoder
> What hosted products has Apple dropped? iCloud might stop supporting old devices but that doesn’t stop you from keeping the data on device or accessing via a new device.
Apple is a bit of a weird case because historically they've been a hardware company first and have done very little in the way of consumer services. But they're just as happy as to kill off consumer products if they want to; they just have a more limited selection to start from (which is itself another layer to the "problem" of trying to use them as a replacement - you can't rely on a product they don't offer).
madeofpalk
iTunes Ping https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ITunes_Ping. I never trusted Apple after they got rid of that /s
Apple's problem is they'll often leave products to be stagnant. Existing, but on life support. Like basically all their Mac Apps. A lot of hardware products like this as well, like HomePods.
They have a raft of iOS apps that seemingly come out of hackathon projects that they release, never update, and then maybe quietly kill off. I thought they killed Clips, but it's still hanging out there...
thrdbndndn
His point is about data portability, not service uptime.
This export feature is outright bad, worse than the industry standard by a mile. Why wouldn't it include something as basic as tags? It just forces users to write their own scripts, wasting time for everyone involved.
jamienicol
It does include tags
Buxato
I trust none of that ones, only Google for one of my emails and my Android phone. The track of abandoned services of Mozilla is astonishing.
rockskon
Chasing the ever-cycling list of organizations that haven't yet betrayed trust with regards to privacy. If you're going to go with the "who can you trust" angle then you need to qualify that with a type of product.
Also?
An organization's past doesn't dictate their present.
catlover76
[dead]
Vinnl
One thing that unfortunately never got properly announced, is that over time Pocket was slowly open sourced piece-by-piece, mostly as it got rewritten/modernised, as I understand it: https://github.com/Pocket/
I guess the fact that it wasn't a big bang source code dump made it hard to make a moment of it.
(Note: open-source does not necessarily mean that it was optimised for self-hosting, which would've been a lot more work, of course.)
mort96
Kind of a bit "too little too late" when they're still open-sourcing it but by bit in 2025 after promising to open-source it during the acquisition in 2017. I'm not very impressed.
Vinnl
It wasn't started in 2025, it's a process that's been going on for years. (Presumably, but I don't actually have more information here, the pre-acquisition codebase couldn't easily be open sourced without rewriting for legal reasons, e.g. copyright residing with someone else.)
mort96
Nothing about the communication at the time indicated that publishing the source code would happen gradually over a decade. For all intents and purposes, what was promised was that it would be open source within some reasonably short time frame.
whou
Totally! I loved using Pocket when I wasn't that crazy for FOSS advocacy. I've been checking their repos and forums here and there over the years to check if they open sourced everything, since that's been a promise since 2017. Last time I checked they still just had their mobile apps open sourced. Glad to see that they've finally released the back end source code! Excited to see community progress on making it self-hostable or forking it altogether!
Surprisingly, the Pocket's recommendations were their feature I liked the most that I never saw any other open source alternatives out there. Would love to use it again if it means that I keep my own recommendation data.
kepano
I built Obsidian Web Clipper (open source, MIT) to replace my read-it-later app and save everything to local markdown files. Now that Obsidian Bases is available, it makes for a very nice web archival tool and reading experience. Here's a video:
https://mastodon.social/@kepano/114553164915046938
You can use Web Clipper with any app that supports Markdown, not just Obsidian.
Defuddle is the underlying HTML-to-Markdown library I made for Web Clipper, and can also be used as a CLI:
dorian-graph
Do you have a trick for getting the images as well, as opposed to them being links to the remotely hosted?
keybits
Obsidian recently introduced a native 'Download attachments for current file' which you can invoke with cmd / ctrl + p.
I like this as I don't always want all the images for something I've clipped from the web. This gives me the choice.
DoingIsLearning
I think that is just a convenient way to do it with markdown.
Theoretically you could embed images in markdown with 'data:' scheme. But I am unless it is very small images it will probably not be very efficient to embedded the data in a text file.
gausswho
Thank you for your work on this! It's become my go-to since leaving Pocket.
I do have a bug report: even when explicitly specifying which vault to send clippings to, what I experience is that it sends to my last opened one. On Android w Firefox Nightly and the extension.
jonahx
This is very cool.
The thing I really want is this, combined with some automated local background LLM training / rag (not sure what the right approach is) process. So that, at the end of the day, everything I bookmark get saved locally, can be read in a nice format like you have the video, and be semantically queried, and it's all local:
"What was that article I saw read 1-3 months ago some new type of LLM training?"
"Find that really nice explanation of determinants article"
etc...
Have you investigated anything like that?
kepano
Since the content is saved to Markdown you can use it with pretty much any tool that will ingest that content.
There's also Obsidian Web Clipper's Interpreter feature, which lets you run prompts on a web page before saving:
akhdanfadh
[dead]
dudeinhawaii
Sad to see Fakespot shutdown after purchase. I rely on Fakespot for a sort of ground-truth when navigating Amazon. When faced with 20 similar items, all having thousands of faked review scores, it was helpful to get the A-F rating. While these tools didn't really need to live in the browser, by purchasing and then killing them, they've done the web a disservice.
"Fakespot's analysis of online shopping reviews didn't fit a model we could sustain"
I feel like you figure that out before you purchase the largest tool for analyzing and detecting fake product reviews.
metadat
Yes, losing Fakespot is brutal! Will Mozilla consider open-sourcing it? Then someone who cares can pickup the torch.
This New "AdLand" Mozilla is way << worse than << Old Moz.
To Amazon's credit, at least now they do surface some junky items as"Frequently Returned", which I've found very useful to differentiate between and avoid the worst trash clones.
EA-3167
You know how it goes, embrace, extend, extinguish isn't just for MS anymore. I'm in your shoes here, Fakespot is really useful on Amazon when it warns you about a seller having problems for example.
testfrequency
Super bummed about this.
I know a surprising number of high profile CEOs and founders who live by Pocket, really has just been quietly reliable and simple way to reserve content for later.
Despite there being so many other $apps that can fill the gap here, none of them seem to be as clean and straightforward as Pocket has been for me.
Anyone here paying for Matter or Readwise? I know Instapaper may seem to be the obvious migration path, but since my landlord is kicking me out, maybe it’s time I move to a more robust solution.
NewsGotHacked
I have been paying for readwise for about a year and a half now. I was a pocket subscriber for years before they got bought out by Firefox. All that said, I wouldn't call myself an advanced user of either (tag a lot less than I would like, want to revisit more than I do, etc.).
I am reasonably satisfied with read wise as a replacement/upgrade to pocket and will continue to pay for it for the time being. My least favorite part is it needs 2 apps/extensions for full functionality (readwise and reader). It works but feels clunkier to me than it needs to be.
tristanho
That is definitely one of the biggest painpoints, and we feel it ourselves for whatever it's worth!
However, if you're just looking for a replacement for Pocket, you only need the Reader app/extension and it shouldn't be clunky at all.
It's only if you want our highlight-specific reviewing/exporting functionality that you would also need the Readwise app... still not ideal, but merging two complex products like this without making the experience janky/complicated for new users is a really really hard problem!
apparent
The current pricing of Readwise seems like it will not be attractive to the 99% of Pocket users who are just looking for a reader app, and don't want to plunk down $120 every year for that (and various other features they aren't looking for).
It looks like you have a "Lite" tier that doesn't include the reader app. Maybe there should be a free tier that offers only the reader app, and you can try to upsell users from there. Otherwise people who just want a reader app will migrate to Instapaper or other free reader apps. I know that's what I plan on doing!
mrehler
Even when I was a new user right as Reader was getting started, I didn't think it was clunky to be honest. I thought it was clear when I was using one vs. the other. The only problem I've ever had is that typing/saying "Readwise Reader" is a bit clunky when discussing the product, but "Readwise" refers to the other one, and "Reader" isn't a sufficient name itself.
brianjlogan
I only use Reader. What's the other for?
ewoodrich
I pay for Readwise Reader and it's pretty great, although I have been noticing issues extracting the full text on certain sites. It sometimes just seems to give up and the extract contains an empty block and is 1/10 of the expected length. A bit frustrating since that's my main use case.
brianjlogan
Been using readwise. I quite like it. I'll gladly pay the price if it means preventing encrapification down the road.
It does everything that I liked out of Pocket and Omnivore.
It also has a neat sync feature where all my notes/highlights get saved to my Obsidian.
gxqoz
I tried Matter but it lacked Android support at the time so didn't go deep into it. I've been a heavy Readwise user for the last two years or so. It's better than Pocket in almost every way, although as I've moved into the 99.9th percentile of archive size I'm seeing some annoying perf issues they'll hopefully fix. At least they have a Discord and are making actual updates to the app, something that Pocket stopped doing probably five years ago.
jweber123
I'm using the free version of Matter, and it seems like a good improvement over Pocket. It managed to import most of my Pocket saves too.
synthesis12
I can't recommend Raindrop enough if you're looking for alternatives
0_____0
I have been using Obsidian Web Clipper to save stuff to read later. If you already use Obsidian it's worth a shot. It's not perfect but it does a reasonable job of translating articles etc. into markdown. I don't actually know if it saves images locally, I suspect not (which is probably a pretty big weakness)
jrks11o
it saves images locally in your vault
edit: sorry, the clipper links them
msmithstubbs
Matter user here. I love the app, currently on the paid plan.
It has some nice bells and whistles (reading articles to you, highlights, etc) but it does the core job of saving articles for reading really well.
I’m not a pocket user so it may or may not be a good substitute but worth trying. I wish Matter worked on the kobo but there’s no API AFAIK (they do have a few of their own integrations with Obsidian and Readwise).
ortusdux
I really enjoyed https://waldenpond.press/ when it was up and running. They selected articles from your pocket once a month and then printed, bound, and mailed them to you. When I discovered the service I had a 500 hour reading backlog, and for $14/mo I was getting 100+ page books of self-curated content. They were perfect for flights, trips, and lending out. I was able to force it to include recipes as well, and I still find myself referencing them frequently.
huhkerrf
I would have absolutely loved this. I would love for someone to do this with Substack or podcast transcripts.
ruibiks
[dead]
kstrauser
If I’d have known about them sooner, they’d have all my money.
aftergibson
I had the same thought! I've been attempted to cobble together a solution to do essentially this over the years!
cavejay
Also a previous user of waldenpress - it was amazing to have the pocket backlog made so tangible. Now that pocket is packing up, it'll make it even more difficult for WP to re-start.
wilted-iris
I built something quite like this with epubs for another read it later service. There are lots of them!
mkbkn
Well, tell us.
Mistletoe
Wow this is so neat.
aucisson_masque
> Why is Pocket shutting down?
> Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people use the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs.
Oh yeah, it explains everything.
I wish one day a company pr representative will be bold enough to just say "we don't want to tell you".
snafferty
That seems pretty clear to me—many people were using it at one point, but now few are, so it's not worth maintaining.
andyjohnson0
But why are few people using it?
Critical mass of people using app-based walled gardens? Something else?
_Algernon_
They took a tool that is fundamentally about separating curation and consumption of content, then added back the same type of for-you algorithm driven social media, engagement maximizing stuff that people wanted to escape. Not exactly surprising that people don't want to use it.
dncornholio
I read this as: Nobody was using it.
sureste
Everytime people talked about Mozilla or Firefox the main complaint was Pocket. Everytime. Yet most people here are sad to see it go. What gives?
plorkyeran
If you don't use Pocket then the acquisition was bad because they spent a bunch of money buying an unrelated company to add a feature you don't want. If you do use Pocket then the acquisition was bad because you don't want to be relying on a weird side project of a company because they'll do a terrible job of maintaining it and it'll inevitably get shut down.
x0x0
> they spent a bunch of money buying an unrelated company to add a feature you don't want
While fiddling (and paying their execs $$$) as the only useful thing they do -- firefox -- crashed and burned into irrelevance. Leaving the company useful only as an ersatz chrome hypothetical competitor to keep the feds / EU at bay. Great for the overpaid people running it; less good for anyone in our industry.
Exec pay: up and to the right.
Marketshare: way down and to the right.
Don't worry guys -- now they're playing VC and AI, at which they're sure to be as good as they were at running Firefox. Though I guess since you could say their only successful product was anti-trust insurance sold to Google, that's at least in the finance space, so in some way related to being a vc...
simianparrot
People really don’t like your comment it seems but you’re right, even if it’s a little on the nose.
I think most people wish it wasn’t true, myself included, but how many times does Mozilla have to show us their priorities are anything but improving and maintaining Firefox itself before we accept the truth?
burnte
This is exactly correct. And everything happened exactly as written!
Centigonal
like grape jelly and tomato soup, two great tastes that don't belong together.
advisedwang
Some people hated pocket, and would complain about it. Different people liked pocket and are commenting here.
The community has people with different viewpoints, and you are seeing different people's comments on different stories (either because different people are commenting or because different comments are getting voted to be visible).
frollogaston
I hated pocket being enabled by default, that's all. I also think a lot of people saw it as adware/spyware even if it technically didn't work that way, which tbh I'm unsure of.
That doesn't mean I wanted it dead. I was happy for the feature to exist and for others to use it. Maybe some people were angry that they even wasted a few KB downloading the extra code for a feature they won't use, but I'd be ok with it.
interestica
Nicely articulated. I think their comment encapsulates the disbelief people have about public opinions that differ from their own political viewpoints (and the aspects that had been amplified within their own media/algorithmic bubble).
micimize
The complainers were FF users forced to deal with bloat they didn't use, those who are sad here are pocket users. They're just different people. Though, even those who didn't like the bundling of the extension probably didn't actively want the service to fail.
onli
Right. I would be one of the people who saw pocket as an unnecessary distraction, but even I tested it and my opinion is partly based on pocket just not working in my Firefox at the time. I also just did not like that it was given space in the toolbar while a way more important rss button was denied that space. And despite that, I still think the shutdown now is bad - this should be spun out or be moved to a Foss project, and certainly not be killed for more ai nonsense.
BTW, fakespot (the service they also shut down) is or could be an applied ai project where that technology could be helpful, and they also shut it down. That also feels wrong, especially the combination.
mrweasel
Pocket was pushed pretty heavily and basically shoved down the throat of Firefox users. Many obviously complained about this behaviour, either because they had no use for Pocket or already had a different solution. Mozilla was basically mimicking Microsoft behaviour of just forcing products/features onto it's users.
Shortly after the Pocket launch Mozilla stopped pushing Pocket and it became less visible in the Firefox UI. Now it's just a tiny grey button most don't click. So you're either use Pocket and like it, or you don't even think about it.
The main complaint, as I remember it, was mostly how Mozilla positioned Pocket. Some people picked up Pocket over the years, many liked it. These are not necessarily the same people who objected to have Pocket thrown in their face.
ryukoposting
Pocket became annoying because Mozilla started shoving it down your throat, whether or not you wanted it. To most FF users, Pocket is (at very best) a source of occasional popups and other UI annoyances. People who had a use for it really liked it, though.
I used Pocket for about 3 years, before and after the acquisition. When Firefox started syncing bookmarks across devices, and they added the reader mode, Pocket became obsolete in my mind. I stopped using it because I didn't need it anymore.
Y_Y
I think it's consistent to be annoyed that they went and bought something and shoved it into everyone's browser, but also that they're taking away a service that people have come to depend on.
kstrauser
There are lots of people with different opinions on the same subject, and not all of them speak up in the same conversations.
nosioptar
I'm quite happy about it. I might even print out a tombstone to piss on.
I'd have had no problem with pocket if it'd been an optional plugin. Or, if it'd been optional at all. If I wanted to go around disabling a bunch of browser bloat, I wouldn't be using Firefox.
oneoffcomment
I wish there was a "Beg HN:" because I'd love to see a little graveyard with 3d printed tombstones of all the failed and canceled products of all the big tech companies.
renegat0x0
There are a ton of bookmarking software, and good, and self-hosted.
- karakeep
- grimoire
- omnivore
- wallabag
- linkwarden
I myself use RSS reader / bookmark manager that I wrote [1]. Everything is open source. Even data [2] [3].
Links
[1] https://github.com/rumca-js/Django-link-archive
ravenical
omnivore got acquired, they shut down: https://web.archive.org/web/20250503155629/https://blog.omni...
podgietaru
It is Self-Hostable. I worked on the self-hosting stuff. Follow the guide here if you're interested: https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore/blob/main/self-host...
Ey7NFZ3P0nzAe
I've been super happy with karakeep: https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep
It does have an "import from pocket" feature builtin.
The dev is suuuuper nice and the features have been nicely coming along. Can't wait to see all the features announced.
burnte
I've been wanting a tool that does exactly one thing, keep the bookmarks of Firefox and Chrome synced on my local PC. I don't want collaboration, distributed, cloud first, SaaS, friends, notifications, tags, AI, or anything else. Any suggestions for a tool like that?
flkiwi
Don't forget Readeck. I've been super pleased with it. (Omnivore is dead btw.)
anonzzzies
Omnivore is open source, bit weird people insist on open source because 'future proof' and then when the commercial entity disappears, it's 'dead'. Why do people make their own instead of making an entity around what is already there if it was liked and open? Very much a validation for not open sourcing anyway. But then again, I cannot possibly use Obsidian or so because when they sell the place (not if, when), sure I have the open format, but not the nice tooling. I rather struggle with inferior open source products and contribute on those than having to go through these 'Google bought us, you have 2 months to export your data' kind of thing.
joseda-hg
You can still host it, and pressumably it should keep working, I wouldn't set up a new instance with it because I don't quite see an active dev community around it (But I do with Wallabag or Shiori), no one is stopping the community if there's interest
Around obsidian, as long as you avoid plugins that don't store data as plain text there's nothing to export and you could use any text editor (Or even IDE) in place of obsidian
No boilerplate has an interesting video about it, Obsidian: The Good Parts [1], I can open my Vault with VSCode or nvim and have all my data, sans the pretty views, because I also avoid the non text extensions, and if push comes to shove, I can grep for tags or something simple like that
Obsidian might sell (Maybe when one of the founders/owners go away), but it's not like they have investors to appease, they could keep the show going indefinitely as far as I can tell
flkiwi
Right, I was referring more to the commercial project (similar to Pocket ending). I was testy about it because it was one of the best I'd seen in a while ... until it wasn't. I'm glad it's continued on as an open source, community project.
ikomrad
I tried readeck and missed being able to download pages for offline storage. Also , the interface is confuse as when you mark and article as “read” , it still appears in the “unread” view. You have to archive a page to remove it from Unread.
The dev knows about it, but hasn’t fixed it yet.
The app was easy on install and it looks nice, but it needs some work.
randomor
Wow, after Instapaper went back to indie from Pinterest[1] and Omnivore closing last year this is no longer surprising. This is also proof that read-it-later app as a category is not sustainable as a venture / company backed service.
This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps. As there is no reason why a server has to be requirement to enjoy the full service. Your computer is fully capable of interacting with these webpages directly....
On Apple ecosystem, there are few alternatives one can migrate to. I also created an app that target this category (and more) called DoubleMemory: https://doublememory.com that has a few different takes as well:
- no registration needed (icloud sync)
- no extension required (just double command + c)
- launches from menu bar as a launcher, in a stunning Pinterest-style waterfall grid
It's all free to use with no limits, as i'm still working on paid features. I'll work on a pocket importer for these who are interested in migrating.
rakoo
> This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps.
I don't think you even need apps for that. I don't need to save everything forever but I do want to save articles to read offline, after transferring them to the phone:
- I transform the page into an epub thanks to browser extensions (for example this one: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/saveasebook/>) - I save the content in a special "toread" folder that is synced with syncthing - From my phone I can open all files in pretty much any epub app - With a few scripts I can search in them
al_borland
Apple also has a read later service built into Safari. It’s not the most feature rich, but it has existed for several years now.
I’d be curious on the stats of these services. Myself, I save a lot of things with good intentions and then never go back to actually read anything later. For a stand alone service, this is the worst. I send them data to store, then never do anything with it. I have to imagine this is quite common, considering the amount of information coming at people every day. It’s always more than I can handle, so it’s not like I ever run out and need to head to the saved articles.
I’m looking at using ChatGPT to help me process through all of it, just to make sure there wasn’t something I actually wanted.
A few weeks ago in the HN comments someone mentioned their philosophy on it was YAGRI… You Ain’t Gonna Read It. I may have made up that phrasing, playing of YAGNI, but that’s how I remember it. Basically, if you aren’t going to read it right now, you probably never will, so let it go.
randomor
That's indeed the bane of this category of apps. You save it but don't ever go back. Yet we all intuitively want to use it as we can never allocate the right mental space at the right time. Our brain usually are in the browsing mode when we are on social, and needs a slightly different mindset when we are ready to dive into a long read.
I believe there are path forward with this category of apps though. Capturing is just step 0. Self-organizing so retrieval is super easy is step 1. Condensing and summarizing information are also possible with local models or MCP.
zimpenfish
> You save it but don't ever go back.
I have a thing which picks 10 random unread "old-ish" links from Pocket (via my local DB) and emails them to me. (Used to be an iOS Shortcut but Pocket's API got in the way and I turned it into Go on my server instead.) Quite handy for surfacing things you've forgotten about but the linkrot in older saves means it's sadly often useless.
wintermutestwin
I have a read later “service” called keeping a couple hundred tabs open at once (enabled with Sidebury vertical tabs and their panels). Works great for me.
al_borland
I have 134 tabs open on my phone right now. Every few months I get fed up enough and close them all, or maybe all but 3.
basisword
>> Apple also has a read later service built into Safari. It’s not the most feature rich, but it has existed for several years now.
I was a big Instapaper user until they added Reading List to Safari. It's just enough features, it's built into all my devices, and it's the thing that keeps me using Safari too (Chrome's reading list implementation sucks).
al_borland
The thing I don’t like about Apple’s implementation is the All list doesn’t show read/unread status. There is a list for unread, but not for read.
I just pulled mine up to go through it and if I had to guess I have about 5 read out of probably 250. Which 5 those are, no idea. I also find it very easy to accidentally click on an item, which marks it as read without any visual indication. I just have to know this, and then remember to right-click and mark unread.
I spent a little time this afternoon (maybe 10 minutes) looking at export options to get the data in a way I can go through it. It seems to be stored in a plist along with the bookmarks. plutil has an export option, but it won’t export to json (it throws an error), so I’m left with 150k lines of XML, which then converted to 31k lines of json. I’m now debating if I should continue down this road, or just plow through it in Safari. There are some things on GitHub, but I don’t want to run them without reviewing the code, and at that point, I’d rather write my own. Maybe I’ll use it an excuse to try out duckdb.
tetrisgm
This looks like a lovely body of work.
I do have to say I am reluctant to even try it because the idea of essentially hijacking the copy shortcut really makes me anxious.
Especially because I often press command c multiple times to ensure the thing I want is registered. Using that as a trigger sounds like it would punish me.
I’d normally brush this off, but here the entirety of the pitch is centered around the idea of that command, rather than its value prop.
Hope this gives some insight!
randomor
That's how it inspired me to create this app really. I often do this to important text subconsciously so one day I asked what if i can automatically save that... It feels intuitive and avoids the extensions.
With that said, you can disable this double copy trigger easily, it's an menu bar option if you right click the icon. Also there are other ways to capture: share sheet, service menu, drag and drop into the app icon or into the menu bar icon.
On ios, it doesn't have this double copy magic obviously, so it just functions as a normal pretty read-it-later app. Hope that clarify things!
randomor
Just added a Pocket Importer for those who are interested in giving DoubleMemory a try: https://doublememory.com/posts/tools/
You can also import from ReadWise, Omnivore or any other format via our custom GPT importer...
rsaz
Your app looks great, I love when apps make good use of iCloud syncing.
If you don't mind me asking, what's your plan for monetization? I'm considering moving over from Raindrop.io, but am a bit worried about basic features ending up behind a subscription.
randomor
My plan is to keep everything free and work on value generating features that will focus on organization and consumption. Think of it this way, most features we have so far are just making it easy to capture, which is just step one. The users are giving us a chance to keep their content. We don’t really generate any value until they later search it or consume it. I’m hoping to align to that value.
Practically speaking, I’m planning to keep existing features free with no limits. I’ll be working on these truly value generating features with a bit more limits at a fair price so it can sustain the development.
podgietaru
I actually don't necessarily think that's true - As someone that has a bit of a background with the codebase of Omnivore I think the thing that killed that wasn't necessarily the business model (let's be real, they didn't even offer a premium tier.)
I think it was the introduction of features that required an unnecessary amount of processing power. Namely, RSS feeds. Their RSS implementation parsed every new webpage - a large percentage of which would never actually be read.
They hosted on Google Cloud using things like Cloud Functions. A good proportion of articles were parsed using Puppeteer, when a cheaper shorter running HTTP Request would have sufficed. The PDF viewer they used cost an arm and a leg.
None of this is to shit on the legacy of Omnivore, because I think with the team they had they built an incredible product. But I think there was a lot that could have been done to reduce monthly costs, and that there could have been more effort to monetise.
I paid for Pocket (without using premium features), and I donated to Omnivore, but the thing is ... I happened across their community whilst doing / building something else. I wouldn't have known donating / subscribing were even an option if I didn't. I'm sure I'm not the only kind of person who subscribes purely based on the fact I get value from the software.
I'd like to believe there's a viable business model around these sort of things. And honestly, a much less ethical version of me says that there absolutely is when it comes to Data. I don't think it'll ever be mega profitable, but sustainable? Sure. The Omnivore team was like 2 devs and open source contributors. I believe you could get to a point where it'd be able to sustain that team.
randomor
You are right. The architecture is just creating burdens and frictions to sustain the business if mostly relies on freemium user expansion. This is especially attractive to VC backed companies as they sometimes are judged by their growth when they are pre-revenue. And growth with free users is like a poisonous apple, that looks appealing but only accelerate the burning of your cash pile. To the point that it's afraid of charge money that may impact their main growth metrics.
I do believe apps like ReadWise that charges a subscription will have a more likelihood of surviving. Or Omnivore if it's less aggressive in expanding to compute-heavy features without charging.
My main point is, this is a category that's better served by local-first architecture, on Apple ecosystem, you also have the added benefit of having icloud sync for free.
kimberli
I loved using Omnivore, and I've found so far in building https://curi.ooo that you can actually do a lot of the legwork in rendering webpages client-side (even on mobile) so that the server-side processing is just used to simplify the HTML. Obviously I'm nowhere near Omnivore's scale but so far costs have been extremely manageable.
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See also https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/.