did anyone ever offer a method of detecting link rot in bookmarks automagically? i gave up on using bookmarks a very long time ago after finding so many links no longer working.
Not automatically but when you open a dead link you can ease the pain by using an extension such as "page archive" [1] to quickly search an archive such as the wayback machine and perhaps get something useful out of it.
I've always wished a browser such Firefox would extend bookmarks as an offline archive of all links you add to it. Your own personal wayback machine perhaps.
that's what I thought. I was against the integration and had to make efforts ever since that inappropriate cash-grab. Glad to see it's dead.
I wish Mozilla would find the funding to stick to being a good browser rather than this current phenomena of waiting to see what the next shitty thing they do to the software is.
Check out LibreWolf and see if its defaults come closer to what you want. For me, it's better. I still have to modify a few settings, but not nearly as many as with vanilla Firefox.
Thank you for the link. I didn't realize Fakespot is also getting shut down. I guess these acquisitions didn't work out so well profit-wise, but it's good to see more focus on their core browser.
I've been a massive user since Read It Later. I used to get year-in-review emails telling me I was in the top 1% of users. For a period of several years, I read an astounding amount via Pocket. It is very tightly intertwined with my time on HN, as most headlines I'm interested in get immediately saved to Pocket.
My usage dropped a lot when I stopped commuting via the subway (where offline was critical), and a lot of my media consumption switched to podcasts, over time. I always thought Pocket could have gone multimedia, and in a world in which they supported podcasts, I would have loved to have everything in one spot. Newsletters, too.
But, I'm not surprised that the end has come, considering they stayed in their lane. Also, if the Google default search gravy train is about to disappear, this is one of the consequences. The idea that Tab Groups are a replacement is laughable.
I wonder if this is the sort of thing that could live on as a community project?
I do use it, on Desktop only. On mobile I still use Pocket only.
Actually I use an Obsidian plugin to sync my Pocket saves into Obsidian.
That plugin might be a great backup/way-out strategy for Pocket users.
I use it pretty extensively. Aside from being a pretty poor experience on mobile (it straight up can't be used on iOS at all, works ok on Android), it's the best web clipper I've used.
I really wish they would integrate the functionality into Obsidian itself, though I think there are technical limitations with it.
I had submitted the Mozilla blog post about this and Fakespot (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44063930) but this submission seems to have received the traction. I added a comment to my submission pointing here.
Yes. I guess what I meant to say was that my submission was almost totally ignored and, thus, really wasn't worth any effort on the part of the HN mods.
Same and it's my favourite Kobo feature. I hope Mozilla releases Pocket source code for people willing to self-host it. Kobos are highly hackable and I'm sure the community will find a way to change getpocket.com domain in the built-in Pocket app, even if Rakuten chooses not to provide this option.
I’ve been using Raindrop and have used the Permanent Copy (offline) feature enough that I wouldn’t consider doing without it. It’s worth every penny if you ask me. And you can host it yourself AFAIK, I just haven’t looked into it much.
> 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.
> 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.
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.
For my definition of code in this context you're in the first group, as you're doubtless going to have to modify some Dockerfile/.env/config.yaml to point the flapdoodle_cache setting to /usr/local/.this/fnar
I'm self-hosting a couple of services that stopped receiving updates (including security updates) about 10 years ago. They still serve my needs perfectly well. They're hidden behind HTTP authentication (with HTTPS) so the internet noise ("AI" shit, web scrapers, shodan, script kiddies) doesn't even know they exist.
It's a pity Sandstorm never super took off. Portable serverless with really nice security built in meant really easy to deploy apps; app server just for you or for a group of people was so nice & easy.
I really hope we someday have self-hosting that isn't as intimidating, that isn't a million different systems all complex in their own way, where there's a base platform with base assumptions and base tools, that let's us manage our self-hosted apps & their data.
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'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...
> 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).
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.
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.
I never used Pocket but was a long time user of Instapaper before moving to Readwise Reader. My experience has been that many links, other than the most recent ones, are dead.
Thank you! Hope you don't mind, but I took the liberty to have Gemini convert it to python, since I'm not familiar with Deno. Appears to work just fine. I posted a gist here in case it is useful to anyone else: https://gist.github.com/appel/a6accfab384f80cb12c9c20a1075e9...
I'm of course happy to take it down if you do mind, just let me know. And thank you again!
Linkding is basically a reading list with some extra features like downloading an arching copy , notes, and tags.
I think of Wallabag and Readeck as readers since they render the page in “app” , keep track of your reading progress, and in some cases let you highlight text
I've tried all of the options: Linkwarden, Linkding, Karakeep, Shiori, Wallabag, Grimoire—you name it, I've tried it. These are all great tools, and I use Karakeep myself, but I use it to bookmark and archive links, not as a "read it later" tool.
In my opinion, no self-hosted read-it-later tool can replace Instapaper or Pocket, as they focus on providing an exceptional reading experience in a native app that works offline. None of the self-hosted tools offer a comparable experience.
So, depending on how you used Pocket, there are either better or no self-hosted options.
I wish Mozilla would open-source Pocket so it could be made into a self-hostable option.
This might come off as dismissive, but after using services like Delicious from way back, I've more or less ended up using Obsidian to edit a few markdown files that contain links to stuff I liked.
I know there are services that offer more, but if I look at how I __actually__ used them, this does the trick.
Oh man. I have been working on a side project just for this purpose. The aim is to create a pocket like experience (with additional functionality like handling other media types) that is local first, unhosted, and more future-proof (no lock in).
All data is stored entirely on your device, and you have the option to sync it to your own storage provider like dropbox. This means you don't need to have the technical know-how to setup and maintain a server.
Its not usable yet, as I have rewritten it several times, but in the current iteration it is a client side PWA, so cross platform. Just started a new job so had to take a break for a bit.
There is readeck, linkwarden and karakeep. Each has a slight different focus (readeck probably has the most read it later focus). There is also omnivore, but I have been struggling to get it to work selhosting (there currently is a bug that prevents signing in), it is also quite resource heavy.
This looks great! Does it capture the website from what is currently rendered in the browser, or does it get it through a separate get request? In other words, if I am on a site that is only locally available or is logged in, will it still capture the website?
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.
> 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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Agreed, except none of those things (Saas, hardware, etc.) explicitly promises you a forever timeframe. That's really what I'm poking at--the promise, rather than the reality, which you quite accurately describe.
And that's the fundamental problem with web software, regardless of its technical merit (or lack thereof).
It's crazy that you can pay something for so long but whenever they decide it's not profitable enough, you not only loose access to the hosted ressources but also to the complete usefulness of the tool.
Meanwhile there are people still keeping around computers from the late 2000s. They might not be secure for browsing the web but at least the software can still be useful.
The update everything all the time is such a perverse incentive, tech is gobbling up value that could be better invested somewhere else.
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)
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!
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.
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.
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.
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 :)
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.
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?
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.
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".
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.
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.
> 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.
I'd love to know where to migrate my Pocket data. The funny thing is that I had "Migrate Pocket" on my calendar for June 30th.
And are you serious that the exported data doesn't have the tags? Really?
I wonder how a database like this has no value, especially with the customization power brought by AI. Didn't Mozilla think about selling the product?
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)
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.
I used Matter for a few weeks and it was fine. The email newsletter collection is interesting but it's sort of a paywalled feature and I didn't really use it much. Several other paywalled features I wasn't interested in. At the time I really wanted an iOS widget and I don't think Matter had one, so I bounced. I'm using Feedly now and really like it, especially for the suggested news RSS feeds. I get by with a free account and it feels like they don't try to convert you very often... Unfortunately the act of adding a new bookmark is weirdly slow on my phone. Maybe that's just my device.
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.
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!
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.
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!
A lite tier that's only the Reader app would be great. I'm exploring self hosted options to replace Readwise Reader due to the price being a little hard to justify and not using most of the features except the website saving.
BookFusion (cross platform ePub reading app) by comparison has a great pricing structure that makes it hard to ever consider unsubscribing for the value I get. Highly recommend the app for anyone who uses Android eReaders in combo with iOS devices/desktop.
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.
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).
One issue I've had with read-it-later apps is that I end up accumulating far too many articles and never actually reading them. Now my approach is simple: if I see something I want to read, I either read it immediately or never.
There could be a better system (for me): a read-it-later app with a strict limit—say, 3 or 5 slots. If it's full and you add a new article, the oldest one gets automatically deleted to make room. That way, you always have something to read, but never feel overwhelmed by an endless backlog.
For me, this is just browser tabs. Modern browsers seem to do a good enough job with both persisting tab state between sessions and not expending tons of resources on idle tabs. So I just pop the article of interest up in a new tab and leave it there until I get back to it.
Saving links and offline reading is dime a dozen nowadays, but the one BIG feature was recommended articles, which basically opened the reading list of the world and you could read extremely interesting longform articles based on your list. It was the best magazine you could imagine. But I guess it required maintenance and moderation so they axed it - in the typical fashion of an acquired product I might say.
I still wish for something like this with privacy in mind and community maintained.
True, there are a lot of bots that use Internet Archive, which is probably the easiest to scrape. Maybe ask Jason Scott of Archive Team if he has any ideas for how to use IA and other archives for this purpose, and for ideas about how else to get this data?
I think Instapaper was another solution in this space that may have the info you want.
Maybe ask on some data hoarder subreddits about how to find new content that’s relevant to your interests with existing social proof?
I can see how the data from Pocket would have made that a lot easier for you, but finding a quick solution may be difficult. I think Apple News has a bit of social components around surfacing popular content, but that is not the same as user generated content indicating interest in a specific site, which is your goal.
Are you familiar with MetaFilter? There a community that might have some insight into your question, as they’re like HN but somewhat more crunchy and broadly less technical, but very human. Asking around other communities, you might find some suggestions.
Please let me know if you find a solution because this is an interesting problem, and I would probably be just as interested in the solution.
The TWO BIG features were recommended articles and integration with IFTTT. I think, of the suggested alternatives, only Instapaper has IFTTT integration (modulo setting up a local webhook).
Given I have multiple things per day (and have for 10+ years) going into Pocket, this is going to be a big pain in the arse to deal with.
Ah, I'm talking about feeding -into- Pocket. I haven't found anything except Instapaper that has direct IFTTT actions for saving URLs or anything which natively supports a webhook kind of thing for saving (but I'm sure there must be something because it seems such an obvious thing to support!)
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).
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm just glad it has a funny name instead of something arrogant-sounding like "Dunning-Kruger effect." That was ok in a research setting but got turned into an insult.
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.
> 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...
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?
This is what confused me coming into this thread too! I was wondering what it'd be like consider how widely unpopular pocket is around here. Enough that anytime Firefox is brought up people point to pocket. No one defending it at those times so at just hear negatives. I'm sure there are plenty of different users but it's interesting to see what opinions dominate a thread at a given time.
I think people just like complaining about Firefox and Mozilla. Or maybe it's just that HN likes to complain in general
Either way, good news for Google I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
That's not true, I sing the praises of things that bring me value all the time. I am, arguably, getting pretty close to "shill" category for some of them. However, I think that behavior should get a pass if the things being shilled are actually FOSS and not just "change from one company to the other"
I think statistically I'm still right. Complaints are always more frequent than positive comments -- and more unsolicited. I always factor that in when reading, for example, product reviews. While there are always people willing to sing the praises of products they like, the average content person is likely to just move on with their lives, and a wronged person cannot wait to tell everyone.
This is also related to Cunningham's Law.
Look at this thread, I've never heard so much positive talk about Pocket in my life. Up until it's imminent demise nobody had any strong inclination to talk positively about it.
You're right. Everywhere I've gone to school or worked, any big online forum was mostly complaints, even though I went to great schools and had cushy jobs. You'd think every course curves to a D- and every employee gets a 10% yearly pay cut. It's simply because one unhappy person can be as active online as 100 happy people.
And on some sites like Yelp where complainers aren't disproportionately active, complaints can have disproportionate power. Like a 4.5-star restaurant's average is affected way more by a 1-star review than a 5-star review.
In my experience people are more likely to complain about things that annoy them than those things which make their lives easier. However, nowhere in that statement will you find "everyone" is more likely to complain, just that the probabilities are much higher for complaining about a thing rather than advocating for a different thing.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Crap. My Kobo Libra supports Pocket as its only built-in way to get articles onto the device. I use GoodLinks to store links I like, and have a Shortcut that copies new articles from GoodLinks to Pocket. If I’m reading something interesting but long, I bookmark it, and that evening it’s on my ereader waiting for me.
It’s a nice setup. I’ll miss it. There’s not a great replacement, either. Even if I create a GoodLinks-to-epub pipe or something, now all those articles will be mixed in with my books and magazines. I don’t want to have to pick through a hundred random articles to find the next book I want to read.
Mozilla, hear me out: what if, just what it, you drop some of the AI stuff you’re blowing cash on that people who use Firefox often actively dislike? Could you shave a percent off that and use it to fund Pocket instead?
Well, crap. I've had a Pocket account for more than ten years. It's a key feature on my Kobo devices, to boot.
I hope Kobo manages to find some alternative provider for similar functionality, rather than just dropping it altogether.
EDIT: Oh, and worth noting that this product will officially die before Mozilla fulfills its promise to open source it, back when they acquired Pocket. Thanks, guys.
Pocket has pretty much exclusively been a, “send article to Kobo” button for me thanks to the integration.
I doubt my now-ancient Aura One will be getting a firmware update to replace Pocket, unfortunately. Might be time to either look at alternative firmwares or see if Rakuten does trade-ins on newer models.
I use KOReader [1] on my Kobo. It supports Wallabag [2]. Wallabag offers both hosted [3] and self-hosted options. There's also a standalone kobo client for Wallabag [4]. In addition, Wallabag also supports direct import from Pocket.
It has been a while since I used Wallabag on KOReader and I have no experience using wallabako (that project wasn't around when I tried Wallabag). But seeing that you're already using KOReader, I don't expect either of them to present a challenge to you. As far as I remember, using Wallabag on KOReader, including sync was simple enough.
The only issue I have with Wallabag is that it reduces the battery supported time significantly. This isn't a big issue in my case, but a longer backup would be nice. However, others have reported that they don't suffer the problem to the same magnitude. Perhaps wallabako can reduce that power usage when KOReader can be exited.
781 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 280 ms ] threadI've always wished a browser such Firefox would extend bookmarks as an offline archive of all links you add to it. Your own personal wayback machine perhaps.
[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/view-page-archive/
I wish Mozilla would find the funding to stick to being a good browser rather than this current phenomena of waiting to see what the next shitty thing they do to the software is.
I've been a massive user since Read It Later. I used to get year-in-review emails telling me I was in the top 1% of users. For a period of several years, I read an astounding amount via Pocket. It is very tightly intertwined with my time on HN, as most headlines I'm interested in get immediately saved to Pocket.
My usage dropped a lot when I stopped commuting via the subway (where offline was critical), and a lot of my media consumption switched to podcasts, over time. I always thought Pocket could have gone multimedia, and in a world in which they supported podcasts, I would have loved to have everything in one spot. Newsletters, too.
But, I'm not surprised that the end has come, considering they stayed in their lane. Also, if the Google default search gravy train is about to disappear, this is one of the consequences. The idea that Tab Groups are a replacement is laughable.
I wonder if this is the sort of thing that could live on as a community project?
Alternative is using iOS share with Obsidian.
I really wish they would integrate the functionality into Obsidian itself, though I think there are technical limitations with it.
(saves this HN post to Pocket to come back to it later to see replies)
See, save, read later - I’m sorted.
https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore
I wonder what Rakuten are going to do.
edit: I had no idea Mozilla actually bought Pocket. Mental that they're willing to shut it down
I switched to Raindrop, and the free-tier is more than ~~useless~~ useful to me.
[1]Raindrop.io
Low bar to hit.
Adding to that, all i want is a download current page to read offline, sort of like pdf (embedded image and styles) but on reading mode.
https://github.com/gildas-lormeau/SingleFile
HN does not support whatever markup you are trying to use. You have to use Unicode:
“I switched to Raindrop, and the free-tier is more than u̶s̶e̶l̶e̶s̶s̶ useful to me.”
https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/18b6tdp/mozilla_c...
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.
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.
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.
- people who _can_ code it themselves, or
- people who believe they can get AI to code it for them
people who can decide if somebody else's code is "good enough" to host it themselves
I really hope we someday have self-hosting that isn't as intimidating, that isn't a million different systems all complex in their own way, where there's a base platform with base assumptions and base tools, that let's us manage our self-hosted apps & their data.
Get it from your repository. In that case you are trusting somebody like Debian or Redhat. They’ve earned an awful lot of trust.
Google has very good/complete Takeout data for most of its services.
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...
RIP Apple Ping.
It met the same fate as Facebook Ping.
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).
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.
Also?
An organization's past doesn't dictate their present.
Have been hosting it for years, there’s a browser extension and a phone app by a third party developer as well.
I also tried readeck for a while but went back to lindking because of missing features
https://readeck.org/en/
There’s also linkwarden
https://github.com/linkwarden/linkwarden
Too colourful for me, can’t like the design
And there’s also karakeep
https://github.com/karakeep-app/karakeep
I'm of course happy to take it down if you do mind, just let me know. And thank you again!
AFAICT Linkding is a bookmarking app, much like Pinboard, not a read-later app like Pocket.
Also, linkding offers a way to read it later by using the singlefilextension https://linkding.link/archiving/
I think of Wallabag and Readeck as readers since they render the page in “app” , keep track of your reading progress, and in some cases let you highlight text
In my opinion, no self-hosted read-it-later tool can replace Instapaper or Pocket, as they focus on providing an exceptional reading experience in a native app that works offline. None of the self-hosted tools offer a comparable experience.
So, depending on how you used Pocket, there are either better or no self-hosted options.
I wish Mozilla would open-source Pocket so it could be made into a self-hostable option.
> Wallabag
I broke requirements down to 3 use cases
Links I visit often (general bookmarks) Links I visit once( read later) Links I preserve forever (offline storage)
I know there are services that offer more, but if I look at how I __actually__ used them, this does the trick.
All data is stored entirely on your device, and you have the option to sync it to your own storage provider like dropbox. This means you don't need to have the technical know-how to setup and maintain a server.
Its not usable yet, as I have rewritten it several times, but in the current iteration it is a client side PWA, so cross platform. Just started a new job so had to take a break for a bit.
Follow if you are interested (I need to update the Readme): https://github.com/jonocodes/savr
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.
Never trust a company like this. You'll always get burned. If it's not FOSS, its not reliable and will likely burn you
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
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.
https://web.archive.org/web/20250321050043/https://getpocket...
Forever just doesn't mean what it used to.
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.
It's crazy that you can pay something for so long but whenever they decide it's not profitable enough, you not only loose access to the hosted ressources but also to the complete usefulness of the tool.
Meanwhile there are people still keeping around computers from the late 2000s. They might not be secure for browsing the web but at least the software can still be useful.
The update everything all the time is such a perverse incentive, tech is gobbling up value that could be better invested somewhere else.
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)
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.
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!
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.
I'd sign up for a paid version of yours if it had that feature. But I'm not sure how many others premium users would do the same.
Not 100% foolproof but I'm willing to bet it will work for the majority of links
https://fabiensanglard.net/2168/french.webp
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 :)
[1] https://raindrop.io/integrations/pocket
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.
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...
(Now I read it, it does sound like so. My bad.)
Edit: and I see now other folks noticed and shared it as well.
Fields are: title, url, time_added, tags, and status
The tags field is a pipe-separated list of tags
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.
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.
I'd love to know where to migrate my Pocket data. The funny thing is that I had "Migrate Pocket" on my calendar for June 30th.
And are you serious that the exported data doesn't have the tags? Really?
I wonder how a database like this has no value, especially with the customization power brought by AI. Didn't Mozilla think about selling the product?
edit: sorry, the clipper links them
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.
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!
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!
BookFusion (cross platform ePub reading app) by comparison has a great pricing structure that makes it hard to ever consider unsubscribing for the value I get. Highly recommend the app for anyone who uses Android eReaders in combo with iOS devices/desktop.
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.
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).
I still wish for something like this with privacy in mind and community maintained.
I think Instapaper was another solution in this space that may have the info you want.
Maybe ask on some data hoarder subreddits about how to find new content that’s relevant to your interests with existing social proof?
I can see how the data from Pocket would have made that a lot easier for you, but finding a quick solution may be difficult. I think Apple News has a bit of social components around surfacing popular content, but that is not the same as user generated content indicating interest in a specific site, which is your goal.
Are you familiar with MetaFilter? There a community that might have some insight into your question, as they’re like HN but somewhat more crunchy and broadly less technical, but very human. Asking around other communities, you might find some suggestions.
Please let me know if you find a solution because this is an interesting problem, and I would probably be just as interested in the solution.
The TWO BIG features were recommended articles and integration with IFTTT. I think, of the suggested alternatives, only Instapaper has IFTTT integration (modulo setting up a local webhook).
Given I have multiple things per day (and have for 10+ years) going into Pocket, this is going to be a big pain in the arse to deal with.
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).
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.
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.
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...
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?
I think people just like complaining about Firefox and Mozilla. Or maybe it's just that HN likes to complain in general
Either way, good news for Google I guess ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The vast majority of people using Firefox don't care at all.
And then the people are significantly affected, the Pocket users, are going to be the loudest in this thread.
My explicit point was about perception bias.
My point was about how this bias is often undermining ourselves. In this case, helping Google chrome.
It just seems worth pointing out. That the comment sections in Internet forums seem to preference comments that compilation.
You're talking about two entirely different groups of people even though they're all on HN.
This is also related to Cunningham's Law.
Look at this thread, I've never heard so much positive talk about Pocket in my life. Up until it's imminent demise nobody had any strong inclination to talk positively about it.
And on some sites like Yelp where complainers aren't disproportionately active, complaints can have disproportionate power. Like a 4.5-star restaurant's average is affected way more by a 1-star review than a 5-star review.
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.
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.
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.
It’s a nice setup. I’ll miss it. There’s not a great replacement, either. Even if I create a GoodLinks-to-epub pipe or something, now all those articles will be mixed in with my books and magazines. I don’t want to have to pick through a hundred random articles to find the next book I want to read.
Mozilla, hear me out: what if, just what it, you drop some of the AI stuff you’re blowing cash on that people who use Firefox often actively dislike? Could you shave a percent off that and use it to fund Pocket instead?
> Mozilla never did reveal how much they paid for Pocket, did they?
They raised a series B for $5M if that helps ballpark it for you.
I hope Kobo manages to find some alternative provider for similar functionality, rather than just dropping it altogether.
EDIT: Oh, and worth noting that this product will officially die before Mozilla fulfills its promise to open source it, back when they acquired Pocket. Thanks, guys.
I doubt my now-ancient Aura One will be getting a firmware update to replace Pocket, unfortunately. Might be time to either look at alternative firmwares or see if Rakuten does trade-ins on newer models.
[1] https://koreader.rocks/
[2] https://wallabag.org/
[3] https://www.wallabag.it/en
[4] https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako
Any opinion on using wallabako vs koreader? koreader might involve some more steps to sync it looks like?
The only issue I have with Wallabag is that it reduces the battery supported time significantly. This isn't a big issue in my case, but a longer backup would be nice. However, others have reported that they don't suffer the problem to the same magnitude. Perhaps wallabako can reduce that power usage when KOReader can be exited.