[HN Gopher] Mozilla to shut down Pocket on July 8
___________________________________________________________________
Mozilla to shut down Pocket on July 8
Author : phantomathkg
Score : 682 points
Date : 2025-05-22 16:30 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (support.mozilla.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (support.mozilla.org)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I'm strangely sad about this, even though this became yet another
| place for my bookmarks to go to die.
| dylan604 wrote:
| 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.
| amlib wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/view-page-
| archive/
| mouse_ wrote:
| One less thing to disable and hide on every new installation is a
| win.
| serf wrote:
| 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.
| hooverd wrote:
| There's no money in being a good browser and a minority will
| scream at any attempt for Mozilla to make money other than
| donations.
| dripton wrote:
| 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.
| toomuchtodo wrote:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/
| JaggedJax wrote:
| 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.
| icpmoles wrote:
| The "Save to Pocket" button at the bottom is a nice touch.
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| Damn, this one really hurts.
|
| 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?
| huhkerrf wrote:
| Your experience and mine is almost exactly the same, down to
| the subway being the place where I used Pocket the most.
| dzonga wrote:
| given mozilla makes a fantastic email client - thunderbird -
| you would think they would have made pocket multimedia but alas
| foray1010 wrote:
| Seems Obsidian Web Clipper is a good alternative, it can save as
| markdown so you own the data offline. Anyone tried it? What is
| your experience?
| acjohnson55 wrote:
| I haven't tried it, but I have used Notion Web Clipper. It
| works, but the experience is nowhere near the same.
| MogwaiAllOnYou wrote:
| It isn't available on mobile AFAIK, which is like my primary
| use for pocket etc., saving links to later read on my laptop
| theyinwhy wrote:
| https://apps.apple.com/app/obsidian-web-
| clipper/id6720708363...
|
| Alternative is using iOS share with Obsidian.
| kepano wrote:
| Obsidian Web Clipper is available on all mobile browsers that
| support extensions including Safari, Firefox, and some forks
| of Chrome
| packetlost wrote:
| 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.
| gareim wrote:
| I literally just used Obsidian Web Clipper on iOS+Safari.
| vinayan3 wrote:
| I'm very sad about this. The one feature that I really like is
| that you could read articles offline. Any good alternatives?
|
| (saves this HN post to Pocket to come back to it later to see
| replies)
| frereubu wrote:
| I've been using Instapaper for years and have always been very
| happy with it.
| podgietaru wrote:
| If you like Self-Hosting - Omnivore is still a fantastic
| product. And the iOS app has been recently fixed to work with
| Self-Hosting!
|
| https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore
| brycewray wrote:
| 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.
| altairprime wrote:
| Email the mods about this and they can cleanup and merge the
| dupes.
| brycewray wrote:
| Well, there aren't any dupes. :-) But thanks.
| hrnnnnnn wrote:
| I use pocket all the time to save articles to read on my kobo,
| which has a pretty good first-party integration in the OS.
|
| I wonder what Rakuten are going to do.
| gobblegobble2 wrote:
| 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.
| ghishadow wrote:
| I wonder if Rakuten can buy pocket from mozilla, their
| integration is so good
| OliveMate wrote:
| I'm not one for external services piggybacked onto other
| software, but the ability to quickly send something to my Kobo
| has been a godsend.
|
| edit: I had no idea Mozilla actually bought Pocket. Mental that
| they're willing to shut it down
| _tqr3 wrote:
| I used Pocket until they remove the ability to save page as
| offline (moved to premium tier afak) and also shoving sponsored
| content here and there.
|
| I switched to Raindrop, and the free-tier is more than
| ~~useless~~ useful to me.
|
| [1]Raindrop.io
| NAHWheatCracker wrote:
| > I switched to Raindrop, and the free-tier is more than
| useless to me.
|
| Low bar to hit.
| _tqr3 wrote:
| Oops a typo.
|
| 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.
| rmwaite wrote:
| 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.
| teddyh wrote:
| > _I switched to Raindrop, and the free-tier is more than
| ~~useless~~ useful to me._
|
| 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 useless
| useful to me."
| candiddevmike wrote:
| They bought pocket for at least 5 million, what a waste of money.
| dralley wrote:
| Pocket was revenue positive for a while, they probably still
| made money on it.
| rwmj wrote:
| Compared to the other ways Mozilla has set money on fire while
| taking its eye off the ball, $5 million is immaterial really.
| onli wrote:
| It's significantly less than the ceo salary, albeit the
| yearly one.
| kristofferR wrote:
| $5 million is pocket change.
| jujube3 wrote:
| No, it's Pocket change. Which could be better spent on the
| CEO's salary!
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/18b6tdp/mozilla_c.
| ..
| _def wrote:
| > 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.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| _> Who will you trust?_
|
| Your-self-hosted?
| reaperducer wrote:
| _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.
| walterbell wrote:
| Are we on _Hacker_ News?
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Yeah, bit weird - surely the population of HN is either
| going to be
|
| - people who _can_ code it themselves, or
|
| - people who believe they can get AI to code it for them
| doubled112 wrote:
| I'm in a third group:
|
| people who can decide if somebody else's code is "good
| enough" to host it themselves
| homebrewer wrote:
| 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.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Code? For self-hosting? I hope not. Most programmers
| shouldn't be programming internet-facing stuff. (FWIW I
| include myself in "most programmers").
|
| Get it from your repository. In that case you are
| trusting somebody like Debian or Redhat. They've earned
| an awful lot of trust.
| xnx wrote:
| > Who will you trust? Google?
|
| Google has very good/complete Takeout data for most of its
| services.
| ummonk wrote:
| 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.
| madeofpalk wrote:
| 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...
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > 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).
| thrdbndndn wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It does include tags
| Buxato wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| FeistySkink wrote:
| Not sure what they mean by tags, but my export seems to have
| all my tags.
| bobsmooth wrote:
| Downthemall might help with downloading all those links,
| depending on what they are.
| larrywright wrote:
| 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.
| tbr11 wrote:
| the csv file I downloaded has a column for tags, pipe separated
| sambaumann wrote:
| anyone have any good suggestions for a self-hosted option?
| duck wrote:
| I've been using https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding and
| highly recommend it.
| pratio wrote:
| I use linkding https://github.com/sissbruecker/linkding
|
| 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
| enjikaka wrote:
| I wrote this Deno script to convert the Pocket CSV export
| to a Bookmark HTML-file so that it can be imported to
| Linkding: https://github.com/enjikaka/pocket-to-bookmark
| nfriedly wrote:
| I've been using Readeck, but I never actually used pocket, so
| I'm not sure how comparable they are.
| pkaye wrote:
| Karakeep is good. You can import the pocket bookmarks. It can
| do automatic AI tagging.
| monooso wrote:
| I don't understand the Linkding recommendations.
|
| AFAICT Linkding is a bookmarking app, much like Pinboard, not
| a read-later app like Pocket.
| pratio wrote:
| I totally understand you and it seems that a lot of users
| like myself were using pocket as way to sync bookmarks
| across devices as well.
|
| Also, linkding offers a way to read it later by using the
| singlefilextension https://linkding.link/archiving/
| monooso wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification.
| InsideOutSanta wrote:
| 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.
|
| > Wallabag
| import wrote:
| They open sourced some stuff already
| https://github.com/Pocket
| akirk wrote:
| WordPress + Friends + Post Collection plugins (+send to
| e-reader), see https://youtu.be/kHaODAUazwE?t=214
| netghost wrote:
| 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.
| jonotime wrote:
| 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.
|
| Follow if you are interested (I need to update the Readme):
| https://github.com/jonocodes/savr
| cycomanic wrote:
| 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.
| asciimoo wrote:
| I'm using & developing Omnom (read-only demo:
| https://omnom.zone/ ). It is self-hosted, free software,
| fediverse compatible and creates 1:1 snapshots of the saved
| websites: https://github.com/asciimoo/omnom
| codethief wrote:
| Great project name!
| JeremyNT wrote:
| 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.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| > 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
| bossyTeacher wrote:
| > 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
| thayne wrote:
| 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.
| OddMerlin wrote:
| 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.
| sdk16420 wrote:
| Not to mention they charged $45 a year for a service that
| included backups in their cloud should your save become a dead
| link. Imagine paying that amount for several years and when you
| need it they pull the rug.
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250321050043/https://getpocket...
| ternaryoperator wrote:
| On that archived page: "A forever home for your collection"
|
| Forever just doesn't mean what it used to.
| tristanho wrote:
| You can connect Pocket to Readwise Reader ( readwise.io/reader
| ), via Pocket's API, which will let Reader view all the tags,
| metadata, highlights, etc.
|
| Even if you didn't want to use Reader, you could then export
| from inside Reader and Readwise to pull out CSVs of all of your
| articles+highlights -- no subscription required.
|
| (full disclosure: founder of Readwise here, obviously if you
| want to try our Reader app that would be sweet, but at least
| wanted to offer this way to get a more complete export)
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Thanks. Will try. Currently Pocket seems to be overloaded,
| but hopefully it recovers in the 30 trial days.
|
| While your app seems nice on first glance the 10$ a month is
| not a small amount for non americans. 10$ a year I could
| stomach.
| tristanho wrote:
| 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!
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| I can't even connect to Pocket.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Would be awesome if your app could scrape the actual
| pocket pages.
|
| 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.
| no_wizard wrote:
| 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
| deepthaw wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I think the image urls provided in the RSS feed are just
| broken, eg this one is linked in the latest article:
|
| https://fabiensanglard.net/2168/french.webp
| oa335 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 :)
| sanjayts wrote:
| 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?
|
| [1] https://raindrop.io/integrations/pocket
| pouulet wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| My export from March had tags, my guess is this docs page
| just got missed when they updated the export months ago
| KPGv2 wrote:
| I just got my export, and it has the tags.
|
| Fields are: title, url, time_added, tags, and status
|
| The tags field is a pipe-separated list of tags
| testfrequency wrote:
| 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.
| dlojudice wrote:
| > 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?
| dustincoates wrote:
| I exported my data, and tags were there.
| 0_____0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| it saves images locally in your vault
|
| edit: sorry, the clipper links them
| gxqoz wrote:
| 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.
| deinonychus wrote:
| 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.
| jweber123 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I can't recommend Raindrop enough if you're looking for
| alternatives
| NewsGotHacked wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| brianjlogan wrote:
| I only use Reader. What's the other for?
| brianjlogan wrote:
| 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.
| ewoodrich wrote:
| 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.
| wenbin wrote:
| 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.
| wenbin wrote:
| 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.
| lastofthemojito wrote:
| 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.
| rs186 wrote:
| If you ever take a train (those where everyone has a seat) or
| flight, those are long hours perfect for reading.
| poisonborz wrote:
| 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.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| You might be able to scrape archive sites or create search
| queries that you use to determine fresh or trending archives or
| domains?
| poisonborz wrote:
| I think it's really hard to replicate the "people save this
| article for later" pedigree without actually having this
| information.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| 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.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > the one BIG feature was recommended articles
|
| 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.
| poisonborz wrote:
| You could try Wallabag. It provides 3 separate RSS feeds per
| saved link status, that could trigger IFTT.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| 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!)
| smallerize wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're missing from all the existing discover
| features in other products, but NewsBlur has a feature that
| sounds like that.
| https://blog.newsblur.com/2025/02/02/discover-related-storie...
| sureste wrote:
| 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?
| kstrauser wrote:
| There are lots of people with different opinions on the same
| subject, and not all of them speak up in the same
| conversations.
| advisedwang wrote:
| 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).
| interestica wrote:
| 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).
| frollogaston wrote:
| 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.
|
| 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 idc.
| Y_Y wrote:
| 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.
| micimize wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| smitelli wrote:
| Some call this phenomenon the Goomba fallacy.
| waterhouse wrote:
| After about 5 minutes of reading, I'm proclaiming that its
| proper name shall be the "hivemind fallacy".
| frollogaston wrote:
| I'm just glad it has a funny name instead of something
| arrogant-sounding like "Dunning-Kruger effect"
| JohnFen wrote:
| Different groups of people.
| plorkyeran wrote:
| 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.
| Centigonal wrote:
| like grape jelly and tomato soup, two great tastes that don't
| belong together.
| burnte wrote:
| This is exactly correct. And everything happened exactly as
| written!
| x0x0 wrote:
| > 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...
| godelski wrote:
| 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 -\\_(tsu)_/-
| NegativeK wrote:
| There are some from the Pocket disliking group that have made
| comments here. I bet most don't care that much.
|
| 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.
| godelski wrote:
| I recognize these are different groups and HN isn't a
| homogeneous entity.
|
| 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.
| 4ndrewl wrote:
| Maybe they were different people?
| wvenable wrote:
| People who are happy about something have no reason to post.
|
| You're talking about two entirely different groups of people
| even though they're all on HN.
| mdaniel wrote:
| 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"
| wvenable wrote:
| 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.
| frollogaston wrote:
| You're right. Everywhere I've gone to school or worked,
| any sufficiently large online forum was mostly
| complaints, even though I went to great schools and had
| cushy jobs. One unhappy person can be posting as much as
| 100 happy ones.
| mrweasel wrote:
| 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.
| nosioptar wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| 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?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Replying to deleted comment by jsheard:
|
| > 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.
| _def wrote:
| Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856801
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| 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.
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| 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.
| goku12 wrote:
| 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.
|
| [1] https://koreader.rocks/
|
| [2] https://wallabag.org/
|
| [3] https://www.wallabag.it/en
|
| [4] https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako
| gobblegobble2 wrote:
| This is amazing. Thank you!
| hiq wrote:
| Thanks, just set it up via koreader that I already had
| installed.
|
| Any opinion on using wallabako vs koreader? koreader might
| involve some more steps to sync it looks like?
| francou wrote:
| https://github.com/Pocket/pocket-monorepo
| waschl wrote:
| Any good alternatives which can import my pocket data?
| VoxPelli wrote:
| Readwise Reader should be a great option
| kirubakaran wrote:
| I'd love for everyone to move to https://histre.com/ :-) (which I
| built)
| saadatq wrote:
| switched from Pocket to Readwise Reader last year, haven't looked
| back. It's a paid app ($10/month) but totally worth it IMO
| ortusdux wrote:
| 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.
| kstrauser wrote:
| If I'd have known about them sooner, they'd have all my money.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| I would have absolutely loved this. I would love for someone to
| do this with Substack or podcast transcripts.
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| They should at least allow to download their copy of the saved
| articles, PDF or HTML or whatever format they save it in.
|
| This is such a betrayal. Some old links might not exist anymore,
| so it's useless to only get the links.
|
| EDIT: Betrayal, because the main reason I paid for Pocket was the
| archiving of articles and now I can't actually export the
| archived copies.
|
| Their decision of not enabling export of the archived copies now
| makes it very unlikely that I'll ever pay for any of their paid
| services in the future.
|
| A shame really because I like supporting Firefox as a browser.
| gxqoz wrote:
| I think doing this would expose how poorly they've actually
| saved their copies of articles. Pocket has always had a very
| funny definition of "permanent copy" which doesn't mean what
| you think it does! I'm a little saddened by their demise but
| the service has been so terrible for so long that I've long
| since moved to the much superior Readwise.
| dankobgd wrote:
| I guess good that i never used it and it was the first thing to
| disable from policies.json
| asadotzler wrote:
| ~90% of HN commenters who mentioned Pocket in the last decade or
| so have been complaining about Mozilla's _wasted_ effort on
| Pocket and how no one asked for it and how it was just another
| Mozilla "scam" and now that it's being removed, ~90% of the
| comments are "sad" and "I used it a lot."
| cosmic_cheese wrote:
| The two opinions aren't necessarily mutually exclusive.
|
| I used and enjoyed Pocket, but never paid a dime for it so I
| can't imagine that Mozilla made much if any money off of me.
| That's probably true for most users, and as such it's not
| difficult to imagine that Pocket ended up being a bad purchase
| for Mozilla in terms of diversifying income.
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > I used and enjoyed Pocket, but never paid a dime for it
|
| I did subscribe to Pocket Premium for a while but it wasn't
| really worth the money (plus they were being arseholes when I
| was asked for API support.)
| jonas21 wrote:
| This is a perfectly reasonable distribution once you consider
| that only a small fraction of people who really care about
| something are motivated enough to comment about it.
|
| There's a small group who complain loudly about Pocket, a small
| group who are really sad to see it go, and probably a much
| larger group that either doesn't know what Pocket is or doesn't
| care enough to write a comment.
|
| It's important to keep this in mind when reading online
| discussions in general.
| JohnFen wrote:
| This.
|
| I'm in the "didn't really care either way" camp. Pocket was
| not something interesting or useful to me, but I could remove
| it from the UI so its existence also wasn't annoying to me.
| hobs wrote:
| I went out of my way to disable it in about:config in the 3
| different booleans I needed to do that. But dancing on the
| grave of something is meh.
| ishanjain28 wrote:
| I was a premium user of pocket for almost a decade before mozilla
| bought it and I remained a user for another few years after the
| acquisition. Mozilla turned it into garbage that didn't even do
| it's job properly and it is a bit sad to see it shut down.
| xnx wrote:
| Might save someone a few clicks: https://getpocket.com/export
| ghishadow wrote:
| I am worried about Firefox Sync now, hope it survives
| fuomag9 wrote:
| Finally, it was so annoying in my browser
| manav wrote:
| What is a good alternative?
| VoxPelli wrote:
| Readwise Reader, paid service from a bootstrapped company, kind
| of ensures it won't randomly kill the product
|
| Also: They are users of their own product
| temp0826 wrote:
| A little surprised to see the sadness regarding something that
| seemed to be universally scorned whenever it was brought up. I
| never tried it and don't really have an opinion, but why couldn't
| this functionality be created as an extension (possibly
| connecting to a 3rd party service? I don't know why that would be
| necessary. Can extensions throw stuff into firefox sync?)?
| huhkerrf wrote:
| An extension is what it was, before Firefox bought it. It's
| what it still is, on other browsers.
| podgietaru wrote:
| I used it to save things, and read it on multiple devices. The
| readability view was never my chief concern.
|
| There was also a period in the history of Pocket where they had
| influential people share their stories, and shared the top
| stories on the Web. It was these things that I loved about
| Pocket. It was a fairly easy way to get a view on the most
| interesting stories that other people were talking about.
|
| I have had such a hard time finding replacements for this
| workflow. I built an RSS Reader into Omnivore (Separate from
| their implementation) to try to emulate it, but it obviously
| wasn't the same.
|
| Pocket had a lot of potential, and in an era of fragmented
| media companies - and the paywalling of everything I really
| think there was an interesting business model around unifying
| things or acting as a quasi-publisher.
|
| It could have been so much, and in the end it just died.
| Mismanaged. It's a sad story.
| yoavm wrote:
| Yes, extensions can save into Firefox Sync.
| segphault wrote:
| 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.
| 1oooqooq wrote:
| missing features at this point is laudable.
|
| most features are useless design clutter (view transition being
| the poster child) or privacy nightmares pushed by google for
| their ad business (all the way back to full url referr to floc)
| somethingor wrote:
| > every other browser
|
| You can just say Chromium
| zymhan wrote:
| Safari exists, and is quite popular.
| thayne wrote:
| Safari only exist on Apple devices, and generally had even
| less features than Firefox.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Kagi is starting to build their Orion browser which is
| WebKit-based for Linux as of this year. I never do
| anything close enough to the browser engine to know, but
| apparently devs like WebKit a lot?
| toyg wrote:
| Devs like WebKit because it's easy to integrate in non-
| browsers.
| skrtskrt wrote:
| Like for desktop apps? I guess this differs fundamentally
| from Chromium in that... you do not run the "entire"
| browser like in Electron?
| fkfyshroglk wrote:
| ...is there a better reason to like webkit? Chromium
| certainly doesn't make effort to seem appealing to
| developers outside of its association with WebKit.
| thesuitonym wrote:
| Since when? I don't see any mention on the blog, and the
| FAQ still says they're not targeting anything other than
| MacOS.
| https://help.kagi.com/orion/faq/faq.html#other_os_support
| skrtskrt wrote:
| It was officially announced late February/early March I
| believe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43302073
| skywhopper wrote:
| Not sure how this contradicts the fact that Safari is
| quite popular.
| homebrewer wrote:
| Going purely by (mis)feature count, I'd say they're
| pretty similar:
|
| https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+136,safari+18.5,firef
| ox+...
| fkfyshroglk wrote:
| Sure, but fewer (sic) features is mostly a better state
| of affairs, and apple devices are mostly what matter if
| you're catering to rich westerners (as most products on
| this forum try to do).
|
| To me, chromium only matters so much as I am forced to
| care by being employed. It offers very little to me
| outside of being necessary to enable the "blur"
| background on my video chats and offers a very shitty
| corporate UX.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| you can blur the background now at OS level on macOS from
| the menu bar.
| IIsi50MHz wrote:
| However, WebKit exists elsewhere.
|
| On mobile, I somewhat like Sleipnir browser for various
| configurable UI niceties unrelated to WebKit. I like the
| way it displays tabs as a scrolling strip of buttons,
| instead of making me open a "manage tabs" UI.
|
| I configured a different user-agent string[1] to make
| some sites happy or to get some sites to neither force a
| dumbed-down "mobile view" nor spam demands that I use
| their mobile apps.
|
| It has a small selection of plugins/extensions, mostly
| written by users.
|
| Occasionally, a captcha will get stuck in a loop, so I'll
| have to try Opera[2] or Firefox. Or a Google site will
| sometimes refuse logins.
|
| . o O ( I don't bother with Sleipnir on desktop, because
| it's buggy, quixotic, and nothing like the mobile
| version. )
|
| [1] There's an optional UI button for switching UA string
| among Sleipnir's desktop or mobile ones, or your own
| custom string.
|
| [2] The only mobile browser I've tried that can always
| convince a site to load is desktop view. Some Google
| sites try Very HardTM to force a mobile experience.
| lxgr wrote:
| Apple devices make up over half of all visitors in some
| markets/segments.
|
| Update: Downvoted for facts, stay classy, HN!
| thayne wrote:
| So what? For many people, having to buy new hardware to
| use it means it isn't a viable alternative browser.
| lxgr wrote:
| My point was more that it's hard to ignore as a publisher
| due to its user base, less that it's a viable alternative
| as a user.
| 0x0 wrote:
| > Safari only exist on Apple devices
|
| Webkit, at least, builds on a lot more platforms than you
| think. Take a look at https://build.webkit.org/#/builders
|
| I'm seeing at least three other _MAJOR_ platforms:
| * GTK-Linux-64-bit-Release-Build * PlayStation-
| Release-Build * Windows-64-bit-Release-Build
| epolanski wrote:
| WebKit 100% exists on Windows and Linux, Microsoft builds
| it under the playwright project.
|
| I use it occasionally, only for debugging purposes
| though.
| creatonez wrote:
| And just a tip, if you don't have any Apple devices but
| need to test a bug/inconsistency being reported by Safari
| users, you can usually use GNOME Web (Epiphany) and the
| same behavior will usually manifest, since it is a true
| Webkit browser. It also includes the Web Inspector with
| the exact same interface as Safari. And it's not super
| outdated or anything like that, it tracks Webkit quite
| well nowadays.
|
| It's a bit ironic that Webkit started as KHTML, a
| component of KDE, but eventually made its way to GNOME
| when a Gecko-based Epiphany became hard to maintain.
| SSLy wrote:
| WebKit also exists on Linux, albeit not as good as on
| Darwin.
| isodev wrote:
| Unfortunately, Safari is also pivoting towards ads in the
| form of "Help Apple to...", services and that thing AI
| companies now call Personal Context. It's not a bad browser
| just you wouldn't pick it for privacy.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Safari is the only reason we don't rename (yet) Web as
| ChromeOS development platform.
|
| Thanks everyone, especially all those Electron crap apps.
| criddell wrote:
| I think once Apple is forced to allow alternative
| browsers on the iPhone and iPad, Chrome/Chromium will
| have won the browser wars.
|
| At least Google is a better steward of their browser than
| Microsoft was with IE6.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| >At least Google is a better steward of their browser
| than Microsoft was with IE6.
|
| The only lesson Google took from the Microsoft browser
| monopoly was "make sure the browser doesn't suck ass".
| So, Chromium will continue to be technically competent,
| enough that they can lull people to sleep and mine their
| personal data in ways that should horrify us all.
| Whatever else Microsoft was, it wasn't a gigantic
| advertising company that wants to spam us with
| borderline-scam sales efforts.
| EasyMark wrote:
| That's not going to happen in the USA. at least not in
| the next several years. I think as long as that's true
| Safari dominance on iOS will continue.
| epolanski wrote:
| I don't think people even think about downloading
| browsers, swear the overwhelming majority of my irl
| friends only uses the default one on whatever phone, with
| rare exceptions.
| cptskippy wrote:
| Microsoft's goal was to make sure the browser didn't
| obviate Windows.
|
| Google's goal is to push ads and you can see that with
| everything their doing. Manifest v3 castrates adblockers
| and their attempts to remove 3rd party cookies would
| stifle any competition in adtech.
| no_wizard wrote:
| The real death knell is that Microsoft decided not to go
| with Mozilla in building the relaunched version of Edge.
|
| That would have been a very fruitful relationship, but
| they couldn't make it work. My understanding is - albeit
| its second hand - that they really didn't want to simply
| jump to Chromium, but Firefox proved far more complicated
| to do what they wanted to do.
|
| Ultimately, Microsoft Edge went from a pretty good
| browser to loaded with of things I dislike, which is a
| real shame, but I know it would have significantly
| boosted usage numbers of Firefox and its engine, which in
| turn would drive more investment into Firefox itself.
| criddell wrote:
| Microsoft was (and is) interested in Electron. They used
| it for lots of stuff like MS Teams (which is now using
| their WebView2 control), VSCode, Outlook, and their Graph
| toolkit.
| encom wrote:
| Outlook is Electron slop now? Jesus christ.
| EasyMark wrote:
| I really really wish they would have gone with webkit,
| even though they could have with some effort used gecko.
| Just giving up and going blink engine is awful for
| diversity in browser engines. I don't have much hope for
| efforts like ladybird, as they're just too small and
| browsers are a huge ecosystem now.
| epolanski wrote:
| > Thanks everyone, especially all those Electron crap
| apps.
|
| Electron apps have no stake nor impact of any kind in the
| results of browser market share. None.
| shiomiru wrote:
| I was curious what "view transitions" are even about:
| https://www.w3.org/TR/css-view-transitions-1/
|
| It's yet another 2.8k line specification solely authored by
| Google employees, introducing a brand new complexity monster
| (clones of ghost elements represented as a pseudo-element
| _tree_ ) to... make it easier to add fancy animations.
|
| Now what I really miss is a "disable CSS animations" button.
| I find them very distracting and an unnecessary burden on
| battery life.
| ls-a wrote:
| I also used them before rebranding or even being acquired by
| Mozilla. I saved some bookmarks then they locked me out because
| they switched to a paid model. I deleted that app then. Very
| shortly after i heard they were acquired.
| fkfyshroglk wrote:
| > 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.
| nimbius wrote:
| the internet is no longer designed to be readable.
|
| it is designed to be profitable.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| Its also no longer designed for users, but for the
| advertisers and bots.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| they really went out of their way to include as many "Why"
| sections and links as possible without saying a single word
| about why.
| Multicomp wrote:
| 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.
| major505 wrote:
| 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.
| doubled112 wrote:
| And Thunderbird?
| kbrosnan wrote:
| 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.
| edoceo wrote:
| How did they even get this corporation owned by a
| foundation situation? That just seems like some kind of
| tax trick.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| Yes. Mozilla was originally only the non profit, but it
| was ruled that selling the search rights violated
| nonprofit status. So they paid a couple million in back
| taxes and had to spin off a corporate entity that's fully
| owned by the nonprofit.
| whyenot wrote:
| 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.
| jonwinstanley wrote:
| 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.
| mewse-hn wrote:
| The DoJ is arguing in court that Google should be barred
| from paying off Mozilla because of Google's search
| monopoly
|
| https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-
| search-r...
| echelon wrote:
| That's so hilariously backwards.
|
| Google should be split into several business units [1],
| should be forced to give up Chrome [2], and should be
| forced to invest several billion of its war chest into
| competitors.
|
| That's what the DOJ would do if it still had balls.
|
| The fact that there's no money in a product like Firefox
| is _insane_. It 's absolutely bonkers. There is so much
| value in it, yet everybody's favorite mega monopoly is
| pouring value into commoditizing everything to keep
| eyeballs and attention and dollars and a _taxation regime
| the size of a medium-sized country_ in its gravitational
| singularity.
|
| Google is an invasive species in every market. We need
| the EU/DOJ/BRICS equivalent of Chicxulub-level regulation
| to end its throat-grip predation on everyone.
|
| [1] Six "Baby Bells", or "Tiny Googs": Search, Android,
| Deepmind, Cloud, YouTube, Ads. Shuffle everything else
| into another bin or spin it off independently. Waymo,
| etc.
|
| [2] You could put Google with the Ads business as there
| is (1) no synergy between Chrome<->Android<->Search
| anymore, and (2) if Ads fucks it up, it doesn't kill the
| broader browser market or web ecosystem.
| godzillabrennus wrote:
| BRICS is a cancer on par with Google.
| echelon wrote:
| I won't argue on this as it's orthogonal.
|
| Sovereignty of your country's smaller businesses over
| monopolies, and sovereignty over data and data privacy is
| paramount.
|
| Every country should be trying to tear Google apart. It
| isn't just too big, it's a black hole that is
| eviscerating competition.
|
| The US, Canada, all of the members of the EU, India, and
| even our geopolitical rivals should be trying to regulate
| and/or break up Google.
| HexDecOctBin wrote:
| India won't. The call of the hour is re-
| industrialization, and manufacturing Pixel phones is one
| piece of that puzzle. Give employment to millions of
| people is far more important in the short run. And there
| are other ways of enforcing sovereignty.
| grues-dinner wrote:
| What's bonkers to me is that people are alway complaining
| about ads and they're not putting "delete web ads from
| your life" front and center of their value proposition.
| Go to firefox.com and look at the the "why Firefox" copy.
| It's could be about basically any modern browser. It's
| like selling a car with "it has wheels!".
|
| I guess that might threaten their tie-up with the world's
| biggest adtech company which is why they keep it at arm's
| length, but that's just slow death by strangulation.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| I switched to Vivaldi after 23 years of Mozilla. Could not be
| happier.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| All my hopes are with Ladybird now
| carlhjerpe wrote:
| 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.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| I'm not super familiar with Servo; I'd heard of the
| Mozilla layoffs but hadn't followed the work. I believe I
| can now split my hopes between the Ladybird and Servo;
| thank you!
| pabs3 wrote:
| Ladybird is moving to Swift IIRC?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > 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...
| thesuitonym wrote:
| 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?
| modzu wrote:
| mozilla has been broken for a long time. spiritually and
| intellectually, brave is the successor
| agiacalone wrote:
| Sorry, but I'm not going to trust any browser based on
| Chrome. Even Brave.
|
| It's not long until Brave won't be able to support Manifest
| V2 as Google has every interest to kill it completely.
| nine_k wrote:
| > _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?
| mvdtnz wrote:
| How does that change the basic facts from the end users'
| perspective?
| maigret wrote:
| For users it's called "putting all your eggs in one basket"
| Lutger wrote:
| 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.
| fuzztester wrote:
| what happened to opera?
|
| i used it a good amount earlier, when it was relatively
| new, but then some issues happened, which I don't
| remember clearly, then i stopped tracking it.
| lawrencejgd wrote:
| It's owned by a chinese company and uses Chromium
| Arrowmaster wrote:
| If you want old Opera look into Vivaldi. It's run by old
| staff from Opera pre sale.
|
| Current Opera is owned by a Chinese company with ties to
| pay day loans and other shady behaviors.
| fuzztester wrote:
| thanks, guys.
|
| i googled:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opera_(company)
| kstrauser wrote:
| Have you forgotten Apple and WebKit?
| cptskippy wrote:
| Isn't Chromium a fork of Webkit which is a fork of KHTML?
| alwillis wrote:
| > Isn't Chromium a fork of Webkit which is a fork of
| KHTML?
|
| Yes... 12 years ago: https://arstechnica.com/information-
| technology/2013/04/googl...
|
| They are quite different now.
| alwillis wrote:
| 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
| alwillis wrote:
| > 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...
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| lttlrck wrote:
| What's your other theory? ;-)
| j1elo wrote:
| +1. That was readbait :) (just joking, it actually was an
| interesting comment to read)
| mikemcg0 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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?
| gxqoz wrote:
| 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.
| brodo wrote:
| > I'm sure they will instead focus on AI integration
|
| And blockchain integration after that.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| > 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.
| PunchyHamster wrote:
| Mozilla appears to be retirement fund for incompetent CxOs...
| bwat49 wrote:
| 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
| strangescript wrote:
| If you look at their finances you will realize that there is
| nothing left in that company.
| soulofmischief wrote:
| 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.
| 90s_dev wrote:
| 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#...
| )
| uxcolumbo wrote:
| Are they going to refund money to Premium users who recently
| subscribed or renewed?
|
| EDIT: As pointed out below, it's covered in the link.
|
| "On July 8, 2025, Annual subscriptions will be cancelled and
| Annual users will receive a prorated refund automatically to the
| original payment method."
| daveoc64 wrote:
| That is covered in the link.
| usernamed7 wrote:
| wow, i did not see this coming!
|
| /s
|
| But i think (hope) this is a good thing. Mozilla has been too
| distracted and needs to get their head in the game.
| huhkerrf wrote:
| Truth be told, my relationship with Pocket has dipped
| significantly over the years. According to my email, I signed up
| for Read It Later in March of 2011, which coincided with the
| release of their Android beta. It was the first thing I installed
| on every new browser or phone, and for many years, my end of the
| year recap had me at the top 1% of readers.
|
| I'm not sure if I changed, the web did, or what, but I'm not sure
| I've saved anything to Pocket in 2025, and probably just a
| handful in 2024.
|
| But still, to Nate and the Read it Later/Pocket team. Thank you.
| xz18r wrote:
| I have used Wallabag[0] for read-later articles for many years.
| Very happy about it. I host it on a VPS but they offer a paid
| instance[1] themselves for $9/y. And otherwise you can use
| something like Pikapods[2] which is also dirt cheap.
|
| [0] https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag [1]
| https://www.wallabag.it/en [2] https://www.pikapods.com/apps
| wslh wrote:
| This hurts. I used pocket as a "read later" or "will not read
| now" tool.
|
| I think a smarter move in this context is to pass the product
| (even much simplified) to a company that can maintain it.
| frereubu wrote:
| I've never used Pocket, so I can't comment on feature parity, but
| for people looking for an alternative I've been using Instapaper
| for years and have been very happy with it. The founders recently
| bought it back from Pinterest and have been making steady
| improvements.
| jeromegv wrote:
| Pinterest sold it in 2018. The founder is Marco Arment, he's
| not the one who bought it back.
|
| But yes, instapaper is still alive.
|
| https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/16/instapaper-is-leaving-pint...
| frereubu wrote:
| Ah, OK - I must have misread the bit about who bought it from
| Pinterest.
| gadrev wrote:
| Pocket was very convenient to send random articles to my Kobo,
| which comes with a Pocket integration. Great for reading long
| blog posts and such, easier on the eyes. Will miss it.
| jamespo wrote:
| Annoying, I used this. It seems self-hosted wallabag might be the
| way to go.
| wilted-iris wrote:
| I wonder if they'd be willing to sell it to the right group of
| folks. I'd love to have a community owned read it later service.
| Otherwise, we're all on a never ending treadmill from one service
| to the next.
| marconey wrote:
| I was a very heavy pocket user and loved it, but around 2019 they
| changed their Discover tab, so you could no longer see the source
| of the article.
|
| The pages were listed as 'Pocket' source, and they windowed the
| original article in a pocket page with ads
| littlestymaar wrote:
| This is a good decision, Mitchell Baker has a familly to feed
| after all.
|
| /s
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| Another day, yet another service that I used shut down. It does
| make one want to get better at programming and build one's own
| solutions since these multi-million and billion dollar companies
| are more concerned with shareholder value than their users.
| interestica wrote:
| Kobo (ereader) + Pocket was always just an amazing and low
| friction combo. This blows.
| sswatson wrote:
| My first thought as well. I wonder what Kobo will do in
| response to this announcement.
| timvdalen wrote:
| Me too, I hope there will be a replacement with the same low
| friction.
|
| I've been using IFTTT with RSS feeds to add serialized
| stories to my Kobo as they release.
| podgietaru wrote:
| They should be able to change it with fairly minimal
| changes. I managed to modify some things to proxy articles
| from Omnivore to it, and the functionality remained largely
| the same across the two services.
|
| They'd have to implement some kind of login, but they they
| should just be able to build some kind of converter between
| whatever format and the format that is expected by the Kobo
| device.
| marapuru wrote:
| Yep, this got me hooked on pocket as well. I had/have so many
| articles on there that ar easy to read on a bus / train / plane
| or in bed before falling asleep.
|
| And the reasons to shutdown are pretty lame. " But the way
| people save and consume content on the web has evolved, so
| we're channeling our resources into projects that better match
| browsing habits today."
|
| It worked for me? And probably at least hundreds or thousands
| others?
| tacoman wrote:
| This is the primary way I read longer articles on the internet.
| I hope something else pops up because this changes my daily
| routine pretty significantly.
| podgietaru wrote:
| I used this a lot, and had a tool specifically to replace it
| with another service. I see others created a fork too.
| https://github.com/Podginator/KoboOmnivoreConverter
|
| They'll probably remove it now, and I am devastated about that,
| because I still use it pretty often with my Self-Hosted
| Omnivore.
|
| I might see if I can find a way to prevent updates in the
| future. Or hopefully they just hide the Menu Option and keep
| the code intact so that I can use KoboMenu to re-enable it.
|
| If anyone from Kobo is reading, please just hide it - don't
| remove all the code - thanks.
| deviantintegral wrote:
| I was a paying Pocket customer until a few weeks ago. I
| switched to Wallabag plus https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/
| to sync to my Kobo. It's not polished, but honestly neither was
| Pocket with their decline in both article parsing and the iOS
| apps over the last few years.
|
| Hopefully this situation encourages more contribution and
| improvement to tools like these.
| pityJuke wrote:
| Was really considering using https://www.reademaillater.com/ to
| sync long newsletters (mainly Matt Levine, which isn't
| available free on the web but is via email) to my Kobo, and
| this sucks.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| What if Rakuten reimplemented their own version of Pocket and
| offered it as a Firefox add-on? A man can dream.
| renegat0x0 wrote:
| 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
|
| [2] https://github.com/rumca-js/Internet-Places-Database
|
| [3] https://github.com/rumca-js/RSS-Link-Database
| ravenical wrote:
| omnivore got acquired, they shut down:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20250503155629/https://blog.omni...
| podgietaru wrote:
| 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...
| burnte wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Don't forget Readeck. I've been super pleased with it.
| (Omnivore is dead btw.)
| 9283409232 wrote:
| They are also shuttering Fakespot which they acquired for an
| untold amount of money in 2023. Sounds like this little attempt
| at being "AI guardrails" is over.
| jbverschoor wrote:
| Is there anything (preferabbly local-first, and sync with dropbox
| or any other service) that simply snips the article (preferably
| using simlar tech as "reader mode"), and something that supports
| other media? (youtube videos, instagram reels, etc)
| jlarocco wrote:
| I feel bad saying I'm happy that they're shutting it down, but it
| should never have been built into the browser and forced on
| people.
|
| Focus on making a decent browser and let extensions be
| extensions.
| nubinetwork wrote:
| Just in time for them to shove more crypto and ai into a bloody
| web browser...
| mattrighetti wrote:
| (shameless plug)
|
| I didn't like Pocket, so I worked on my own link archiver years
| ago [0].
|
| UI inspired by HN, a list of links you saved + tags filtering.
| Plain and simple, less features but does the job for me. I'm
| actually looking for users to try it out as I have not yet
| publicized it that much.
|
| [0]: https://ulry.app
| hugocbp wrote:
| So disappointed. I had such high hopes when Mozilla acquired
| them, specifically for the integration with Firefox.
|
| However, for years the design has been going the completely
| opposite direction of what I expected. The focus on more random
| content instead of my own articles is not what I wanted to see.
|
| Pocket is probably one of my oldest online accounts. I'll be sad
| to see it go but I guess it was already kind of dead for a few
| years now.
|
| Amazing opportunity here for a really simple and focused read
| later app to take the reigns.
| drooopy wrote:
| Pocket and other similar services always ended up becoming a
| virtual junk drawer for me, as I was just hoarding content to
| consume when I have free time, but time never realyl freed itself
| up and content just kept pilling in. In the end, it just became
| one of those annoying things that I have to disable on a new
| installation of Firefox.
| fdsjgfklsfd wrote:
| I used the mediocre TTS to listen to text articles while
| driving.
| ndegruchy wrote:
| I remember requesting the source code after they bought it[1].
| They kept kicking the can down the road. It looks like they
| dumped everything in a monorepo on Github[2] which does nothing
| good for anyone.
|
| Seems like Mozilla is dead-set on grinding up any good will they
| get from users.
|
| [1]: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/pocket-source-code/43686/11
| [2]: https://github.com/Pocket/pocket-monorepo
| monocasa wrote:
| What's wrong with a monorepo?
| saos wrote:
| Damn, I'm a user and sad about this. Whats alternative?
| lxgr wrote:
| Ugh, and that only months after Omnivore (a really great FOSS
| "read it later" app) shut down.
|
| The one constant of "save your favorite articles and websites
| offline, forever" apps seems to be that they're... very much not
| forever.
|
| In my view, this not being a native, interoperable feature of web
| browsers is a failure of the web. I'll be able to listen to a
| podcast episode I've downloaded as an MP3 forever, and the same
| goes for ePub books (if they don't have DRM in any case) - so why
| is the same so hard for blog posts and articles?
| hiatus wrote:
| How can we export the backups from premium version? Let me guess
| --we can only export the URLs.
| saeedesmaili wrote:
| This really hurts. All my content consumption workflow depends on
| Pocket, I shortlist from my rss reader (inoreader) directly into
| pocket, then ot gets synced with readwise reader automatically
| where I listen to the chosen articles [1]. I also use my pocket
| account's archive as a collection of the articles and writings I
| have liked (planning to build a personal and simple content
| recommendation system for myself). [1]
| https://saeedesmaili.com/posts/my-content-consumption-workfl...
| subarctic wrote:
| What are you going to replace it with?
| saeedesmaili wrote:
| Not sure yet. Since I'm already paying for readwise, I might
| use that, but then sharing from inoreader to readwise will be
| multiple steps instead of the current built in pocket
| integration I use. I should also make sure I'm keeping a
| local archive of read and unread stuff just in case. I'll
| also contact inoreader to see if they will replace their
| built-in pocket integration with anything else.
| mayankkaizen wrote:
| This made me sad because I served my need so well. Now I will
| have to think about alternatives. I wish they could open-source
| it.
| timetraveller26 wrote:
| So much wasted potential, I was a top 1% reader for a couple
| years (mostly because I saved a lot of things probably); it was a
| convenient way to save articles and references in multiple
| devices but at the end I was frustated it was so cumberstone to
| keep links organized.
|
| I stopped paying premium and migrated to a self-hosted Wallabag,
| which doesn't have all the features I want but hey, in hindsight
| it was the right decision.
|
| It would be cool if they open sourced the code, but one can only
| dream.
| Vinnl wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| cosmojg wrote:
| Having worked on a similar endeavor, I doubt they
| intentionally dragged their feet on it. They likely had a
| smorgasbord of legal bullshit and technical challenges
| resulting from code omissions mandated by said legal
| bullshit that they had to muddle through.
| KingOfCoders wrote:
| I use it to collect articles for my newsletter. Any alternatives?
| (Free, Browser extension, API)
| bibinou wrote:
| Raindrop: https://raindrop.io/
| Animats wrote:
| Good. Less dependence on external servers.
|
| Now for better local bookmarks.
| rchaud wrote:
| The writing was on the wall for Pocket when paywalls started to
| go up everywhere a few years ago. By that point, it could no
| longer scrape articles reliably.
|
| Before that, it's Discovery feature was great for surfacing long
| form writing on the Net, but even then there were issues because
| they'd pull a lot of content mill slop from Inc.com,
| Entrepreneur.com and there was no real way to block domains.
| Finally, when the good "new media" outlets started shutting down,
| Pocket's content library went down with it.
| Cherian wrote:
| Can someone suggest a good bookmarking app that can be used
| offline, as well as great typography and neat bookmarking of
| social media videos? Absolutely. At least embed and show it
| correctly.
| burnte wrote:
| They were told it was a mistake to buy it, they didn't listen,
| like they never listen. I used to love the organization but it's
| so resistant to outside input that I had to leave the community
| about 12 years ago.
| johnklos wrote:
| Mozilla continues to appear to not get the philosophies behind
| open source. If they really wanted to help people and not simply
| try to get market share and make money, they'd examine ways to
| make Pocket itself open source, including the server end of
| things.
|
| "We're handing this over to a non-profit" would be nice.
| therealdrag0 wrote:
| Looks like much of it is. https://github.com/Pocket
|
| Not sure how complete it is. But appears to have a typescript
| backend included.
| podgietaru wrote:
| 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.
| fifteen1506 wrote:
| Check the barebones but functional Wallabag. Hosted version
| available for a fee.
| puzzlingcaptcha wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's the lack of nice sync to an articles directory that'll
| be missed. I'm also bitten by this shutdown.
| cloudfudge wrote:
| 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.
| el_benhameen wrote:
| This was one of my considerations when I chose Kobo over
| Kindle. Very unfortunate, indeed.
| otherme123 wrote:
| 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.
| marklar423 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.)
| inanutshellus wrote:
| Reading pro-Pocket comments is so surreal.
|
| I never really paid any attention to Pocket and never used it
| but 100% of the comments I ever saw were about how it was some
| invasion of privacy tool that was evidence of corruption in
| Mozilla selling your data to 3rd parties or something.
|
| Now it's dead and ... everyone here is mourning its passing.
| Guess I was a successful mark for anti-Mozilla FUD tactics.
| podgietaru wrote:
| I used Pocket since it was called Read-it-Later back in
| 2011/2010. It was one of the first things I'd install onto
| every device I owned.
|
| I used it until their dreadful redesign in 2023.
|
| I got a _lot_ of use out of Pocket.
| lxgr wrote:
| I've also used it for several years, but it really was
| never great compared to anything else in this space and
| seemingly stopped any feature development years ago.
|
| The biggest problem for me was that they just completely
| gave up on paywalls, at a time when viable workarounds
| finally became widely available (e.g. iOS share sheet
| extensions being able to inject JavaScript into Safari to
| collect the content, which is what many alternatives do).
| Completely useless for reading paid news.
| lxgr wrote:
| My feelings are 30% annoyed (because I still have some data
| in there), 70% hopeful that a thoroughly mediocre contender
| is going a way and some more consolidation in this market
| might finally create critical mass for and focus on some
| open-source, data-exportable solution in the way Omnivore
| unfortunately couldn't.
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| I loved it when it was called read-it-later and was a
| standalone add-on. Requiring a Mozilla account made me stop
| using it.
| input_sh wrote:
| I don't think anyone was opposed to Pocket-the-product, but
| its integration into Firefox.
|
| I used it long before Mozilla purchased it and continued to
| use it for years after, but jumped ship because years went by
| without any updates to the product. IIRC it hasn't received a
| single update between approximately 2019 and 2021. It felt
| abandoned long before today.
| gorbachev wrote:
| 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%.
| geordieboozer wrote:
| The think I liked about pocket was the integration with my Kobo
| ebook reader. I could browse the web on my phone or laptop and
| "add to pocket" for later, then could fire up my ereader and read
| the articles formatted nicely on my epaper screen.
|
| Would be nice if Kobo supported some other service, but a bit of
| a stretch to imagine they'd support something self hosted or an
| open standard for such things
| criddell wrote:
| Kobo supports ReadWise I think.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Yay!
| noncoml wrote:
| Self-hosted alternatives: Karakeep and Linkwarden
| randomor wrote:
| 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.
|
| ^[1]: https://blog.instapaper.com/post/175953870856
| podgietaru wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| al_borland wrote:
| 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.
| wintermutestwin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| >> 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 wrote:
| 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.
| randomor wrote:
| 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.
| leshokunin wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| rakoo wrote:
| > 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
| runjake wrote:
| I moved off Pocket a couple years ago and moved to Readwise which
| is great (paid was a desired feature).
|
| Anyone else have a favorite alternative?
| purplejacket wrote:
| A read-it-later app. Pocket, you had one job. Just one job. And
| for a while that was my killer app on mobile. But, as we see, the
| enshitification of the web continues.
|
| "What began as a read-it-later app evolved into something much
| bigger. After Mozilla acquired Pocket in 2017, we invested in
| building our content curation and recommendation capabilities so
| people everywhere can discover and access high quality web
| content. While Pocket is shutting down, we will continue to
| invest in this promise--through the New Tab experience, our email
| newsletter, and more."
| djhworld wrote:
| I would say I was sad to see it go, but I moved to karakeep
| (formerly known as Hoarder) a few months ago and it's been a
| perfect replacement. Most importantly, you can self-host it -
| which is great.
|
| One thing that stood out to me in the article was this this to
| justify the shutdown
|
| > 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.
|
| I'd be really interested to hear what exactly they mean by this,
| are people visiting fewer websites? Walled gardens like facebook
| etc make it useless for bookmarking so I can see how pocket would
| be a bad fit there
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| Upon reading this at first I was like "Oh, crap!", but then after
| a minute I realized that I wasn't bother to export my saved
| articles... it was basically digital hoarding, for me, I think.
| While I did use it, I likely won't miss it.
| podgietaru wrote:
| While the Kobo app is still available an alternative might be:
|
| Self-Host Omnivore: https://github.com/omnivore-
| app/omnivore/blob/main/self-host...
|
| Use this proxy to point to the Self-Hosted instance to pull from
| Omnivore Instead.
| https://github.com/Podginator/KoboOmnivoreConverter
|
| This is what I've been doing for a year or so now. I hope they
| don't remove the Kobo integration code from my Kobo.
| aspenmayer wrote:
| Isn't Omnivore discontinued? I didn't hear what happened when
| they joined ElevenLabs.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41985118
|
| Apparently the community is trying to shape the project into a
| workable self-hosted state. Ironic post from two months ago
| about a user trying to migrate away from Pocket to Omnivore:
|
| https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore/issues/4550
|
| Same community users provide crowdsourced list of open source
| alternatives to Omnivore:
|
| https://github.com/omnivore-app/omnivore/issues/4462
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| Can we get a list going of the best substitutes and the
| pros/cons? Thanks.
| fullsortcom wrote:
| We have been working on Full Sort for a while now. Lots of
| features to be a contender but not bloated either. Take a look at
| https://fullsort.com.
|
| Demo without signup. Upon signup the service is free. Not mining
| your data either.
| nicbou wrote:
| I abandoned Pocket a while ago. I believe the offline mode was
| unreliable. Instapaper has been a really good replacement for me.
| My use case is to queue up articles to read on my iPad without
| distractions.
| lxgr wrote:
| Pocket was always completely incompatible with Mozilla/Firefox,
| and is at this point hopelessly outdated compared to all
| competitors. I really don't understand what they were thinking.
|
| Just running a hosted version of the excellent and open source
| (both server and client) Omnivore would be an amazing service to
| the open web and for data archiving/portability, but I'm not
| holding my breath.
| kepano wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://github.com/kepano/defuddle
|
| https://github.com/kepano/defuddle-cli
| jonahx wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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:
|
| https://help.obsidian.md/web-clipper/interpreter
| gausswho wrote:
| 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.
| dorian-graph wrote:
| Do you have a trick for getting the images as well, as opposed
| to them being links to the remotely hosted?
| lemoncookiechip wrote:
| I've used Pocket in combination with the In My Pocket add-on for
| a very long time on a daily basis. I don't particularly care
| about the online specific features, I don't care about syncing,
| or any of that. I've used Pocket specifically as a better and
| quicker Bookmarking tool than the browser's default to save pages
| I want to read later, simple as that and it worked flawlessly.
|
| Now I'm forced to find something similar, and I found Save-to-
| Read which does mostly what I need, although it feels a bit
| jankier.
|
| I understand why people have hated this app for a very long time
| and blamed Mozilla for investing into it, but to me it has always
| had value by doing what tools were meant to do, make my life
| easier, even if that's just about saving a few clicks every time
| I wanted to save a page or dismiss it.
| rs186 wrote:
| I have been using Pocket + p2k for long articles that I prefer to
| read on Kindle. There are several issues with the setup, but this
| works well enough for most articles that I have sticked to it
| over the years. Looks like I have to find an alternative now.
| BonoboIO wrote:
| So Mozilla is shutting down Pocket completely by July, and this
| is under their new CEO Laura Chambers who took over in February
| 2024. Meanwhile Mitchell Baker - who was pulling in $6.9M by 2022
| - just bailed out entirely this February after "focusing on AI
| and internet safety" for exactly one year.
|
| Let me get this straight: Baker's salary went from $2.4M in 2018
| to nearly $7M in 2022, while browser share collapsed to 3.45%.
| During that time she laid off 320 employees (70 in Jan 2020, 250
| in Aug 2020), claiming COVID despite record revenues in 2019.
| Then she steps down as CEO to "focus on AI," only to quit Mozilla
| entirely a year later.
|
| Now the new CEO's brilliant strategy is to kill off Pocket - one
| of the few products people actually used that they acquired in
| 2017. Eight years of "investment" down the drain.
|
| This is exactly what I mean when I say Mozilla has no fucking
| clue what they're doing. They're completely dependent on Google's
| search money, executives are getting rich while laying off
| workers, and their response to irrelevance is to shut down
| working products. The whole organization feels like it exists
| just so Google can point to it and say "we're not a monopoly."
| domysee wrote:
| A bunch of alternatives were already mentioned. If you're looking
| for an rss feed reader that can also save links directly,
| Lighthouse[1] may be an option.
|
| [1]: https://lighthouseapp.io/
| daniel31x13 wrote:
| Sad to see Pocket shutting down. For anyone seeking alternatives,
| I've been working on Linkwarden[1], an open-source bookmark
| manager that hit HN's front page twice[2][3]. Plenty of other
| great alternatives out there too, such as Raindrop (not fully
| open-source), Karakeep, and Wallabag.
|
| Also, there's an official Linkwarden mobile app in development,
| aiming to support most (if not all) of Pocket's key features :)
|
| [1]: https://linkwarden.app
|
| [2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36942308
|
| [3]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43856801
| SoftTalker wrote:
| I have never relied on a browser for "favorites" or "bookmarks"
|
| I keep these links in a separate org-mode file, but honestly a
| spreadsheet or even a text file would be fine for that too.
|
| Why does everything have to be complicated?
| karlicoss wrote:
| Seems like official export [0] has tags and annotations along
| with timestamps. However in case you'd like more structured full
| data from the API (instead of a mess with csv + json?), you can
| use my tool [1] to export it. Here's example of its output [2]
|
| [0] https://getpocket.com/export
|
| [1] https://github.com/karlicoss/pockexport?tab=readme-ov-
| file#s...
|
| [2]
| https://github.com/karlicoss/pockexport/blob/master/example-...
| Pxtl wrote:
| I've been using FF since it was Mozilla Phoenix and I never once
| tried Pocket.
| dwayne_dibley wrote:
| Huh, that's annoying. Been using pocket since around 2008, mainly
| for when I was abroad and roaming was costly. Looks like I'll
| need to export my library of stuff.
|
| Do I have any other similar options?
| BonoboIO wrote:
| I've got years of saved articles in there and the export
| situation is pretty bad. It only gives you the URLs, not the
| actual content. So if a site goes down (which happens all the
| time), you're basically screwed.
|
| I'm thinking about throwing Claude Code at this problem and
| building a proper exporter that actually saves the content.
| enjikaka wrote:
| Dang, like many others I use Pocket extensively - especially with
| my Kobo e-reader. This is very sad!
|
| I wrote this Deno script to convert the CSV export to a Netscape
| Bookmark File Format-compatible HTML-file so that it can be
| imported to Linkding. Hope it's useful for someone else too!
| https://github.com/enjikaka/pocket-to-bookmark
| creatonez wrote:
| > 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
|
| Wasn't Pocket always trying to resist bad web trends? If I
| recall, they had a tool that would clean up webpages and remove
| all the junk so you can just focus on the article contents. And
| they were also trying to save the concept of bookmarking from
| complete irrelevance. I guess it's understandable that users
| didn't care, it was an uphill battle for non-power users, and
| power uses didn't like the sponsored articles and already had
| their bookmarks saved outside of Pocket.
| idlewords wrote:
| I'll take it off their hands.
| gorbachev wrote:
| This sucks :(
|
| I've been using Pocket for I don't know how long. I use it every
| day during my commute to read articles from everywhere. I was
| planning on using it on my 3-week multi-country summer vacation
| this August to occupy me during all the country hopping I was
| about to do.
|
| This is a Google Reader killing type event for me.
|
| I'm going to go self-hosted next. I'm sick and tired of this
| crap.
| meindnoch wrote:
| Good riddance.
| donnachangstein wrote:
| Another feature no one asked for, meeting its technological
| grave. For those few users of Pocket this function could have
| been easily handled as an extension.
|
| If Mozilla spent the engineering hours wasted on this toward
| fixing the ever growing mountain of existing bugs they might have
| more than 1% market share.
| readthenotes1 wrote:
| Firefox has the "killer app" for modern browsers--ublock
| origin.
|
| I am dismayed by how much money Mozilla spends on things other
| than the browser, though.
| int_19h wrote:
| Ad blocking should just be an integral browser feature at
| this point, as in Brave or Vivaldi.
| 1832 wrote:
| Pocket users in shambles until they realize Ctrl + D exists
| charliebwrites wrote:
| Don't have time to read this so I saved it in Pocket, I'll
| probably get to it in a few months...
|
| But in all seriousness I've got about 1000 articles I need to
| store and browse...somewhere when Pocket EoLs
| decide1000 wrote:
| This is sad! I use it daily. Not sure what tool to replace this
| with.
| TZubiri wrote:
| It is a time to rejoice and celebrate, for a product that never
| should have existed has died today.
|
| This follows the long history of projects like Google+ and
| hopefully others like Facebook Watch will follow soon.
| yunesj wrote:
| I've been having trouble with Pocket's offline mode and TTS
| feature for a while, and just migrated (yesterday!) to Obsidian
| via Obsidian Web Clipper (automated using Pupeteer).
|
| Obsidian doesn't have all the features necessary for a read-it-
| later app, but almost!
| perdomon wrote:
| Obsidian is phenomenal. I only wish it were open source so I
| could self-host it. Sometimes I worry that they'd sell my notes
| data to advertisers.
| kepano wrote:
| Obsidian cannot access your notes even if you use the Sync
| service (it's end-to-end encrypted)
| jameslk wrote:
| My specific need is I like to reference articles I've read later,
| quickly. I was using Pocket to track links to articles I've read,
| keeping them categorized with tags. It's been a mediocre solution
| for this need (e.g. I'd like to add more metadata, such as
| notes), but I haven't found too many apps/products that serve
| this use case.
|
| What's nice about Pocket is that I can do this from any browser
| on any device, since it has integrations and an app for mobile
| devices. Trying to do this with a note taking app is much more
| clunky and frictional. Especially when trying to quickly find an
| article I had saved.
|
| Anyway, if anyone knows something that fits this use case better,
| it looks like I'm in the market for it now
| kappl wrote:
| Have you looked at larder.io?
|
| Browser integrations, tags and search works fine, but the notes
| functionality ("Description") is very limited.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| Products going away is saddening and maddening but if there's
| demand surely these good ideas should be fought over.
|
| What's going on for the market not to stably fill this gap? Is
| there no workable price point?
| rietta wrote:
| Seems like very short notice!
| rossant wrote:
| I started using Pocket in 2012 and have used it ever since
| (though I'll obviously have to stop now). It was a great way to
| save interesting articles I didn't have time to read right away.
| Naturally, I rarely got around to actually reading them, and the
| backlog kept growing. I just exported my data and found 13,000
| unread articles out of a total of 34,000.
|
| I can't help but picture the Distracted Boyfriend meme, "reading
| my saved articles" vs "discovering new cool articles online to
| add to the ever-growing Pocket backlog, never to be read."
| Nemo_bis wrote:
| I've never understood Pocket. What's wrong with Zotero?
| encom wrote:
| _Oh no, what happened? Oh no, how terrible! That 's just awful,
| how terrible oh no!_ [1]
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPQFF0oqsto
| Poudlardo wrote:
| Damn, what alternative can we look for ? (free, ideally open
| source)
| trwhite wrote:
| I recommend Readwise.
| xeromal wrote:
| Can someone explain what this means?
|
| >Focusing on what powers better browsing We acquired Fakespot in
| 2023 to help people navigate unreliable product reviews using AI
| and privacy-first tech. While the idea resonated, it didn't fit a
| model we could sustain.
|
| Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories
| worth reading. But the way people save and consume content on the
| web has evolved,
|
| Did Fakespot own pocket? I still use fakespot as an additional
| marker in my research of purchases.
| fckgw wrote:
| Mozilla owns Fakespot. Fakepost is pretty unreliable and
| assigning a score to something so difficult to rank isn't a
| great model.
| kamaitachi wrote:
| Have been using FF since early 2000's. Tried using Pocket but
| never really got the hang of it. Just never felt that it fixed a
| problem was having.
|
| Still a FF fanboi, but fully behind shutting anything down that
| detracts from core FF.
|
| Maybe old school, but would much prefer a focus on a browser
| focused on privecy.
| microflash wrote:
| Such a shame and wasted potential. Mozilla could have turned
| Pocket into a read it later + RSS reader killer combo that would
| have closed the browsing loop across the web on Firefox. But they
| slept on it, actively worsening it and finally putting it out of
| its misery. This is an end of an era and it has such a chime of
| finality to it.
| flkiwi wrote:
| Sort of peculiar that a company that is based on and makes open
| source software wouldn't wind down Pocket as a product but
| release it to the community. I don't have any particular wish to
| use it--I moved on years ago--but it's odd at a sort of ethical
| level that Mozilla, of all companies, would disappear software.
| indus wrote:
| Backflip to Delicious to Pocket.
|
| Why isn't there a simple bookmarking solution that can survive
| technology shifts?
| freediver wrote:
| My little side project has been chugging along for those looking
| for (harder to use) variation of Pocket.
|
| https://tinygem.org
|
| The main advantage is that content recommendations based on
| previously saved content are pretty good, especially for tech
| oriented crowd.
| akhdanfadh wrote:
| This is actually promising, kudos!
|
| AI tagging feature like those in Pocket and Karakeep, in the
| first place, seems helpful. But months later, you will get lots
| of tags to handle. Content recommendation, especially if that
| only consider what we saved, can replace the tagging things I
| guess. I wonder how do you do this for free, though.
|
| Also your HN/Reddit integration is what I'm looking for. The
| way I save things from HN so far in Karakeep is that I save the
| main article and add the HN url manually to the note.
| apparent wrote:
| IIRC they promised to make Pocket open source, but I'm not sure
| if the back end ever was. Does anyone know if this is the case?
|
| Seems like a big win for Instapaper, who will likely pick up a
| lot of Pocket's abandoned users.
| Quarondeau wrote:
| Seems odd that it's not being sold off. Was it truly that
| worthless?
|
| It was also a great way to read paywalled articles for free.
| tlavoie wrote:
| This might be a more manual solution for Kobo imports, but I've
| taken to saving pages of interest via Joplin's web clipper
| extension. Pages can be saved as Markdown, HTML, screenshot, or
| URL. If I save the Markdown version (typically looks fine), it
| will have also saved linked images. Exporting that to another
| folder gives me something that I can convert to epub, using
| Pandoc. From there, it's trivial to copy over to my Kobo as
| before. Of course, this already would have been readable on my
| phone, since my notebooks also sync across devices.
| dcchambers wrote:
| Lmao.
|
| I'm sorry, but lmao.
|
| Mozilla just cannot get out of their own way. All we want is a
| good open fucking browser not dominated by a corporation, and
| they can't stop distracting themselves with things that don't
| matter and then eventually shutting them down.
|
| Mozilla needs to clean house of their leadership. Burn it all
| down. Start from scratch. It's a joke right now...and I say that
| as a daily user of Firefox and someone that desperately wants
| them to succeed.
|
| SOMEONE needs to be held accountable for failures like this...but
| all we will get is vague half apologies and corporate bullshit.
| nottorp wrote:
| So what did this do?
|
| The comments lead me to believe it was an extension or
| application for saving web pages in a more readable form for a
| personal archive type thing.
|
| However the obituary mentions curation and an editorial team.
|
| Did they select the info for you or it was your own choice?
| stefan_ wrote:
| It's not important what it is. Pocket was bought overpriced by
| Mozillas incompetent officers on a project to diversify their
| income by playing VC. They then decided to piss all over their
| Firefox browser users by forcefully integrating it with the
| browser. It was a terrible decision, a terrible business, and
| now way past its best by date its finally taken out to pasture.
| Sadly the incompetent officers continue their tenure and soon
| we'll write this obituary for Mozilla, as their C-level
| compensation inevitably outstrips what Google is willing to pay
| for a 1% market share and declining browser.
| smcleod wrote:
| I think this is good, I'd like to see more side projects that
| don't directly relate to the core web browser shutdown in favour
| of browser performance, compliance and feature parity.
| knowitnone wrote:
| I still use Firefox but if Ladybird and Servo get adblock, video
| download, dark mode, I am jumping ship.
| regularjack wrote:
| It would probably make more sense to link to the blog post:
| https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/
|
| Also, it's not just Pocket, it's also Fakespot, which I didn't
| even know existed.
| hkt wrote:
| Terrible and predictable. Saw it coming years ago, and have used
| Wallabag ever since.
| hendi_ wrote:
| I was an avid Firefox user and supporter pre-1.0, even before it
| was named "Firefox". I used Pocket a lot, its history is part of
| my. It's time for Mozilla to die. That'll suck, but it's the only
| way forward. Way too many bad decisions in the last 10 years.
|
| Fuck you, Mozilla.
| fjcero wrote:
| Mozilla should shut down.
| daemoncoder wrote:
| First thing I did after getting the csv export was throw together
| a python script to save all the URLs as PDFs based on the title.
| Not horribly robust, but a csv list of failed URLs will be ready
| when I wake up in the morning.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| > 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".
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