A con for me is how they have the archive system set up. It’s easy enough to add tags, but then navigating to the archive is a bit of a pain.

Another one that’s really good for text-to-speech for those who need it is Speechify. It’s another pricy one, but, if you have scientific research papers you need to read & want the speech-to-text feature, that’s the one I’ve found that can handle the language.

Maybe I’m missing an alternative way of doing it, but it looks like offline reading is a Pro-only feature? That’s what the features table on the site suggests, and seems to be true in the app: I can’t change offline settings and there’s a message about upgrading in the options screen, and my saved articles don’t show up in the app when I’m offline.

If that’s the case then it’s probably a non-starter for me, unfortunately.

Thanks Sophie, I’ll check it out!

Yep, I’m exactly the same — RSS via Feedly and Pocket for reading later — and it definitely does feel like an old-school thing that people don’t really do these days.

I’m not (quite) so set in my ways that I wouldn’t switch to a different approach, but I haven’t yet found a better way to follow all the sites and authors I care about without algorithms getting in the way, nor to maintain a curated list of things I either want to keep longer-term (like recipes, training plans, travel info) or don’t have the time to read/watch right now.

I’ve been using Instapaper since the announcement and it seems OK.

My main use for Pocket was for saving articles then having them automatically sent to my Kindle so I could read them there, as like you, I rarely actually read them in Pocket.

Instapaper has this feature, so it’s good enough for me so far.

I still use RSS (via Feedly) and that plus saving pages for reading later (via Pocket etc) feels pretty old skool and not how most people use the Web anymore!

Yeah I briefly considered Notion as well, partially because of all the cult-like enthusiasm around it, but it really just didn’t seem to do what I needed. As you say, if the answer to not having an offline mode is “just keep the page open” (as if you’re going to know in advance everything you might ever need to access) rather than “yes that’s a missing feature that should be included”, there’s a problem already.

And thank you for pointing out Instapaper’s choice of font! I was finding it unenjoyable to read longer articles on there, and couldn’t really articulate why. Times New Roman is the reason!

I tried out Raindrop first. Apparently, I signed up years ago, as I already had a login. That’s never a good sign. I read that there is no offline mode, but I figured that surely there is by now. I went to read something offline, and it doesn’t even show a cache. I uninstalled the app immediately. This is the same problem with Notion notetaking app. There seems to be a cult around Notion, but it is completely useless if I can’t use it offline. Notion cultists say, “Just keep a page open that you want to use offline”. Dumb workaround!

Instapaper seems to be the most similar to Pocket. It will take me a few hundred saves to get used to the bookmarking system, but it should do. I don’t like the Times New Roman font (so many aggressive pointy bits). I get that they are trying to be an online newspaper, but they should get with the times and use mobile-friendly fonts.