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Ask HN: How do you keep track of the articles you want to read?

67 points by in9 ↗ HN
I'm always gathering links for articles, be it a blog post, or an academic pdf article.

Currently I've been using pocket, but it seems that I've been losing some articles.

Also, there are some features I'd like to have such as searchable content, or the means to save tweets and facebook posts.

This kind of sounds like Evernote, but since the changes to their payment scheme I haven't been following them.

But custom solution ideas are also nice...

91 comments

[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 156 ms ] thread
emmanueloga_
Pinboard.in. Very simplistic but it works: I use it through a bookmarklet, the form to add links has a “read later” checkbox. Later you can see the tagged list of links to read in chrono order.

Also, the https://www.one-tab.com/ extension can help managing many open tabs in the browser and can create a list of links web page that you can “share with yourself”, and add to pinboard.

trextrex
I have been using ggather.com for the past few months and liking it quite a bit, especially it's bookmarking and organization interface as well as performance, as compared to pinboard. The only thing I miss is having an android app.
wepower_ico
getpocket

Works on pc/mac works on mobile, Can extract content from web, Has content suggestions

moolcool
Pocket is pretty good. I use it as my reading queue, but it also lets you strip out all the cruft that most modern news sites and blogs tend to have. Pushbullet is also great if you just want a stripped down way to share links and small files across your devices.
jefflombardjr
Evernote, I have a notebook specifically for that. Then when I go to read the article if I find it particularly useful I'll add notes/tags to the bookmark so that I can recall at a later date.

Even if I'm not looking for a particular article I've read it's so helpful being able to search a topic like "functional programming javascript" and have a list of resources that I have already screened for quality.

djpr
Be it Pocket or anything else, I learned that processing and reviewing is just as important part of the reading process.

I try to commit time on the weekends to read 15 articles/PDF per day (saved on Pocket). I take down notes on articles I find useful (usually 4-5 of the 15 articles).

At the end of the month, I review the notes again and see if there's anything actionable or should be filed/stored in my long term notes (e.g. things to cook, books to read, tools for work to try, resources I'll need later, etc).

This works okay for me but I'm interested if other folks have ideas of what to do after you've read the articles?

wrycoder
As I look at the header for this post, I see an "instapaper" link just to the right of the "7 comments" link. Click that and select a category I've previously set up. (Naturally, I have an Instapaper app on my Mac Air.)
champagnepapi
Slack, just send a link to myself. If you are running MacOS, then you could use the Notes App. It works great, sync's content between devices, and you can password protect notes as well.
craftyguy
I save a list in vimwiki. Since it is a file, I can easily sync it across multiple systems/OSes using git.
tedmiston
I use Instapaper to actually read articles so I can highlight and annotate.

It Instapaper can't parse it, I'll save it to Pinboard or download as a PDF and highlight as I read in Preview.

viksit
Contrarian thought here - but I stopped saving things. I was a very heavy user of pocket, pinboard, delicious et al for web articles. For academic papers I use Mendeley.

I now make an active effort to read the article as I discover it - the point being (for me) that if I'm in the process of "discovering" an article, I'm not "working" on anything else that leads me to have to save it for later -- I'm in the zone, read it and not worry about coming back to it! It's been quite a pleasant change. I don't read as many articles as I'd have saved before, but I'm ok with that!

Baeocystin
I do much the same. I either read it at that moment, or decide my time is better spent elsewhere. I think that people in general underestimate the cognitive cost of context switching, and overestimate the amount of focused, free time they'll have in the future. Saving things for later 'feels' like you're accomplishing something, but with very rare exception, you aren't.
gk1
As my list of "articles to read" grew, I felt guilt and a touch of anxiety because it was yet another thing I didn't have enough time to do. Then, when I finally made the time to read some articles off the list, I was usually disappointed... Here was this thing weighing on my mind for months, and now that I read it I see it's not that useful.

Now I read things on an "as needed" basis: I find and read articles as I need them, for instance if I'm learning about Kubernetes that's when I'm going to go and read 10+ things in one sitting.

Another thing I realized: If I found it once, I can find it again... When I need it. The article isn't going anywhere.

m_fayer
I know the anxiety you're referring to. I eventually started aggressively pruning my to-read list every once in a while, deleting articles that looked appealing when I came across them and impulsively hit "read later" but on more sober inspection no longer seemed worth the effort. No more anxiety, and this way what I end up reading tends to be worth it.
gitgud
I can relate to that. I build up how good the article could be in my head, but it never lives up to it. Probably best to consume then save the good ones!
sgillen
I definitely do this too. But for some acedemic papers it might take me (a first year PHD without much research exp) a few hours to actually understand everything the author is doing. For these cases I definitely try and skim the article to see if it warents furher review, and then save it to a folder in Mendely so I can go through it later.
sytelus
Double contrarian here :). My read it later list now has few thousands things and I love it! The ability to put things in queue frees up my time now unless reading it is absolutely required for task on hand. Think of it as easiest way to filter and prioritize. I don’t think I will get time to read those few thousands pending links but I can still search for things if I remember seeing it before but have forgotten exactly where. On the other hand I sometimes get stuck on long queues or travels without Internet access. At those time saved links in Pocket still available offline is great way to spend time. I also tag links by priority p1, p2 and p3.

So take away is that don’t get frustrated by ever growing read it later list. Think of it as way of creating your local searchable crawl of pages that matter to you.

DarkManZero
I simply use browser built-in bookmarks folder and place it in my bookmarks bar, just to keep it in front of me all the time to remember to read them later.
JesseAldridge
A text file full of urls and book titles. When I want to pick something I open this file in Sublime and go `Edit -> Permute Lines -> Shuffle` and go with whatever is on top.
dannygarcia
I used to rely heavily on pinboard.in but I noticed two things: most of my devices are iOS & MacOS (Safari & iCloud everywhere) and I almost never went back to re-read articles I had already read. So now I track everything through Reading List https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT200294 and prune as I read.
pitzips
I create a bookmark on the Chrome bookmark bar. More than a couple articles and it looks ugly so it triggers a read/process cleanup. Seems to work.
gmuslera
Good part are articles in sites that I read with an RSS reader (Newsblur), so on it I can save articles for later reading. For others it depend on where I read them (i.e. phone, work computer, etc) and may have very different approaches, from keeping tabs open for months to send me links by mail, google keep or even send them to kindle.
aasasd
There's a self-hosted clone of Pocket, Wallabag: https://wallabag.org/en

Can't vouch for it, not having used it (yet), but it ranks pretty high on Alternativeto, which is a good sign.

tibu
Looks pretty good. Did anyone already try it?
Crono
I use it since ~4 Years and i love it. Its also my personal archive. You can tag articles and there is an app (for reading and sharing articles directly to wallabag) and a Firefox addon which lets you quickly add articles and tag them immediately.

But its a rather big php app which did not perform well on my bananapi which i used until half a year ago. Now whith a little bit more hardware (udoo x86) its running really fine.

aasasd
May I ask, what did ‘not perform well’ entail in this case? The reading interface, capturing, or something else?
mud_dauber
Every morning, anything remotely interesting in Feedly or HN goes straight to Pocket.

I mark at hour (at least) each day to look at the list. Usually more.

* news items: skim, share if needed, trash

* resources: skim, then save to color-coded Google Keep card if valuable.

* code: download & add a to-do item to Remember The Milk.

whitepoplar
I used to save articles to read in the future, but not anymore. If I want to read something, I can usually open HN or reddit and find something I'm interested in. However, I think this says more about the general low quality of articles published today (that they're not worth saving).
ansible
I'm usually using the 'save' button on reddit or the 'favorites' on HN. If it isn't on either of those sites, I'll then try to submit it to the appropriate sub and save that.

It works because I'm logged into reddit & HN on most of my devices.

That said, I rarely look back at the stuff I've saved.

qwerty456127
I just open them then OneTab them, there already are myriads in the list and I have only read ~10. Although I happen to be intrigued by some subject all the time and feel constant urge to learn everything I find it extremely hard to read anything longer than a single display (900px-high) page and containing any amount of "water". I dream brevity was taught at schools and encouraged by publishers and not the opposite...