[yolo42]

Somewhat tangentially related. Pocket seems like a dead product. I have been using it since it can out but it feels old, slow and quite behind.

I use it extensively to capture a reading list and then trim it occasionally. Any recommendations for alternatives?

Offline web-rendered article views are a must - something pocket can’t do. And their text mode misses quite a few important details when there are equations or illustrations in the content.

[eole666]

I heard Wallabag is a nice Pocket alternative. And you can host it yourself. I'll try putting it on my odroid one of this day.

I'm now using the nextcloud bookmarks extension, but it's rather slow, seems unmaintained, most android apps & browser extensions don't work anymore (way worse than pocket, but at least there is no adds)

[gnicholas]

I'd considered using Wallabag years ago. How has it evolved in recent years?

[lazyweb]

Using a selfhosted version behind a subdomain of one of my TLDs. Something to be aware of - it can't be hosted behind a specific URI if you plan to have other stuff hosted on the same web root path (like example.com/wallabag), it always needs it's own (sub)domain (wallabag.example.com).

Other than that, it works pretty well with most text-based content. I'm using it through the Android app occasionally, and while the app won't win any design awards, it serves it's purpose.

[arepublicadoceu]

I recently tried wallabag on my home server. The web version is fine. Functional even.

But the state of the iOS app is, well, not great. Clunky design, with odd syncing. Which is unfortunate as 99% of my use case is reading it on my phone whenever I’m waiting for something.

[rakoo]

Save as ebook extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/saveasebook/), everything goes in a folder managed by syncthing so I have it on my smartphone as well.

On the scale of years, products fail, get bought, are unmaintained, become too expensive, etc... An export of your database is always a hassle to manage, and you must hope there will be an importer for the next product that will also fail a few years down the road.

On the other hand, files have always been there and will always be there. Epub is a standard-enough format that will live. The highest piece of complexity is syncthing, which can be easily replaced the day it doesn't work anymore. Bonus: I have all my data offline so I don't need connectivity, and I lower my environmental impact.

Too often products feel like a reinvention of the whole stack because it's easier to sell, rather than reusing proven tools and using them the way they were supposed to be used.

[gnicholas]

I recently heard about Alfread on HN. [1] If you're just looking to replace the front end, you can use it to pull from Instapaper/Pocket feeds.

Not sure if it currently does all you'd want, but the founders are responsive on email so perhaps worth asking for any features that you'd like them to add!

1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29703671

[powersnail]

I've used instapaper for a long time, and it's a better product than Pocket, but it, too, has the problem of missing images sometimes.

If you want to save the entire snapshot of the web page for archival and references purpose, I think zotero is a good choice. But it's not a good read-it-later product.

[ASalazarMX]

Another vote for Instapaper vs Pocket. Basic Instapaper allows you to make folders and select to which folder to save, while basic Pocket only gives you a blank, suggestionless space to write tags.

[theshrike79]

I've been pretty happy with https://pinboard.in/

It doesn't have fancy graphical previews and stuff like that, but it works and archives page contents for an extra fee.

[AA-BA-94-2A-56]

Instapaper is you like cross-platform, including Kindle.

GoodLinks if you only use Apple and value privacy.

[adambyrtek]

Instapaper after multiple acquisitions feels even more abandoned than Pocket.

[bunsenhoneydew]

I used Raindrop.io for a while after moving off Pocket, it’s much better. Now I’m trying out mymind but it’s costly so I may revert back if I don’t find it overly better.

[nicbou]

I am also looking for an alternative. Pocket just isn't good at what it's supposed to do: saving articles for later reading, often offline.

[vymague]

Same. I miss pocket's chrome app. Worked great when offline too.

I don't really care about web service. Any desktop tool that can capture websites like pocket? As in download the stripped-down article. They call it "reader view" sometimes.

There's some extensions/scripts like Markdownload that uses Mozilla's Readibility.js to download stripped-down articles. But it's a bit manual for my taste.

[baryphonic]

I've noticed similar issues lately. In fact, I have resorted to keeping my my Pocket browser extension in Brave disabled because for whatever reason, Pocket seems to cause the browser to fully utilize ~1.5 cores. I only discovered this after disabling all extensions and using them one at a time. Pocket was the only one that seemed to have a consistent signal. I haven't had weird Brave CPU spikes since I disabled Pocket.

I've wondered about how to exfiltrate all of my accumulated links I've put into Pocket over the past ~7 years or so.

[yolo42]

> I've wondered about how to exfiltrate all of my accumulated links I've put into Pocket over the past ~7 years or so.

Yeah, this is what has prevented me from moving away. I was a premium user and used to use their search. I’m not anymore but I still want to keep the list around. I still go back and find references that Google doesn’t show anymore.

There are some apps that move data from pocket to kindle or such, but having an import from pocket in a new product would be really nice.

[orhmeh09]

Could you share more about what Google misses today? Does the content exist and is now effectively unlisted?

[philips]

I am hopeful that the Readwise Reader product will be good. However, it is still closed beta.

[spondyl]

As a beta user, I can say that while it's super promising and I use it daily, it does still have some rough edges to it hence the closed aspect of it. The onboardings are starting to scale up a bit I believe though. Being able to highlight and take notes on RSS items or emails is very nice.

[philips]

I bought feedly just to be able to put rss and mailing lists into Readwise but it is really painful UX personally.

And Pocket keeps having trouble with doing reader mode with sites in 2022 and thus can’t do highlights.

[o_____________o]

Worldbrain Memex is incredible