HN Explorer

Ask HN: What Pocket alternatives did you move to?

126 points by ahmedfromtunis ↗ HN
Since mozilla announced the sunsetting of pocket, I started looking for alternatives, including building a light version for my personal use. But nothing came out of my research.

What options are there and how are you transitioning?

104 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 113 ms ] thread
jethronethro
wallabag. Actually been using it for years, with a short detour to the now-gone Omnivore.
extr0pian
Wallabag. I switched from Pocket to Wallabag years ago because I didn't like sponsored content and ads in Pocket. I originally started paying for it as a subscription directly from wallabag.it, but then I started self-hosting it. Wallabag has an option to import all of your articles from Pocket too. It's a fantastic service.
MattTheRealOne
I also switched to self-hosted Wallabag. I won’t have to worry about the service deciding to shutdown again.
tiboll
After some researches I ended up with Wallabag as well, hosted on wallabag.it. I've got a lot of things saved, sometimes quite long articles (I read a lot, but I save a lot more) The ePub export was a requirement for me since I moved to Kobo (originally for the Pocket compatibility) after old Pocket app on my 1st gen iPad Mini stopped working. I made some test to self host it but the epub export and the images caching was to much for my Synology NAS. I had some good results with a more powerful machine but I didn't want to keep it running 24/7. And finally the export works well on wallabag.it so I though the hosted version worth its price!
inbalboa
also use Wallabag (wallabag.it), but it's android app is so basic and feels outdated
marsop
Wallabag "self-hosted" in Oracle Cloud Free Tier. Works like a charm from Android, Chrome, koreader
floundy
I switched to Wallabag. 14 day free trial (an actual free trial that doesn't require CC info). There's a Pocket import function. I found it useful to filter the .csv that Pocket downloaded me into two .csv's, one for unread articles and one for archived articles, that I respectively imported into Wallabag as the import feature allowed for "mark as read" on imports.

About 10% of the articles I had didn't download due to Captcha requirements or paywalls that had been added since I had archived the article in Pocket. Once my articles imported to Wallabag, I filtered the unread list from 0 to 3 minutes which showed me all the ones that were paywalled or only saved snippets. I fixed them with the Wallabag browser extension, which has an option to save content direct from browser.

I now have Wallabag on my Android phone, Boox ereader (runs Android), and Kobo ereader (via KOReader). No issues and I'm liking it better than Pocket.

xnx
Instapaper
4ad
Never used Pocket, but I moved to Raindrop.io (from Pinboard) for my bookmarks. I believe it can import Pocket.
masylum
Hey, this is Pao, the guy building https://fika.bar.

Fika is a place to save, discover and share content built upon 3 products:

- A local-first bookmark manager (Works 100% offline) - A feed reader: With feed discovery from your bookmarks. - A blog/newsletter platform

The only thing it currently does not have is e-reader integration yet. But you get the other 2 products bundled together which make a lot of sense.

carlosjobim
I was very interested in this project, but I can't login using Einkbro on my e-reader. Otherwise it seems perfect.
RistrettoMike
Throwing another answer in for Instapaper. It’s not as new and flashy as something like Readwise or Matter, but also doesn’t try to do too much.

Killer features of Instapaper for me include the kindle digest and IFTTT integration (which I use to mirror my archived articles to Raindrop.io)

wlonkly
Jeez, I moved from Instapaper _to_ Pocket many years ago.
segphault
I ended up on Readwise Reader after trying a few different options. It unapologetically caters to power users and is clearly built by people who actually use and care about the product, so I'm finding it to be a pretty solid improvement over Pocket.

They also have put some effort into making their mobile app work reasonably well on eInk displays, so it's pretty great on a Boox tablet. It has real pagination, which is a feature that I was pretty annoyed about losing in Pocket when Pocket rewrote its mobile app.

mbirth
I’m an Apple user and switched to GoodLinks at first but later migrated to AnyBox because the latter one can create PDF and WebArchive snapshots of the webpages.
granneman
I also use AnyBox & thoroughly enjoy it. I like that it runs on my devices & isn't tied to a service that might change or decline (like Pinboard), plus the features are excellent.
edoceo
Ages ago I made a PWA (cras) that install on my phones and it's a share-target, so I've been adding to that.

Self hosted, like four PHP scripts and Sqlite.

isthistheme
Instapaper. It's simple and sleek. Provides direct import from Pocket.
rsd79
Me too. Direct import helped, I don't have time to play around looking for alternatives at the moment.
ElectronBadger
Some time ago I went to Vivaldi and since then I use its Reading List.
crinkly
If you have an iPhone, just use reader view, then print it but don’t select a printer and then share it. A PDF pops out. Then shove that in iCloud Drive or on your phone and read it later.

No services or set up involved, works reliably and you can keep the PDF forever.

eviks
PDF is almost a non-digital format, so awful reading experience on devices with different screen sizes, no good content search or even basic copy&paste. And you get no tagging in this scheme. So a major downgrade.
inhumantsar
I wrote a plugin for Obsidian called Slurp which cleans a web page's html and converts it to markdown.
beala
I realized that all I needed was basically a way of syncing bookmarks across a bunch of different platforms (linux, mac, iOS, android) and browsers, and I didn't really need any of the fancier features like offline access. I had claude code one-shot a simple python web app that saves links to sqlite. I stuffed it in a docker container and hosted it on my home server. I set up a public portal using cloudflare tunnels to access it when I'm not on my LAN. I wrote a little bookmarklet that saves a page and is compatible with the various browsers I use.
pkaye
How about Karakeep if you want to run it locally. You can also have it tag your bookmarks automatically if you connect it to a LLM.
aor215
I have a little side project I started a couple years ago for this: https://linksort.com/

I work on it when I can. I'd like to add an import from Pocket feature but I haven't had a free weekend in a while.

The project is fully open source: https://github.com/linksort/linksort

aor215
Actually, now you can import from Pocket. I used Codex and Claude Code to put this feature together in an hour or so :)
thisislife2
Nothing but bookmarks and archive.org and PDFs. Every time I update the browser, I make sure to take a manual backup of the bookmarks.
dtkav
I use Obsidian Web Clipper [0] with the Relay Obsidian plugin [1] (I'm the author) for syncing.

Web clipper converts websites to markdown and puts them into your Obsidian vault, and then Relay can sync subfolders in your vault to make sure you have a copy on all of your devices (even between a work and personal vault for example).

Relay is also collaborative, so I frequently clip things, clean them up a bit, and move them into shared folders (like docs pages).

I like the feeling of local-first combined with a malleable UX. Especially for the pocket use-case, offline-capable is a must for me so I can catch up on reading when I'm flying or otherwise off-grid.

[0] https://obsidian.md/clipper

[1] https://relay.md